


Spider's Seer

by Twilit



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:51:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 60,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilit/pseuds/Twilit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A solitary human in a very dangerous galaxy is looking for a weapon of the finest quality to turn against things that lurk in the deepest depths, in the void past the stars. Naturally, she approaches the newly crowned Empress of the Alternian Empire for some... raw material. Someone she can shape into a tool, a weapon. What arrives at her door will surprise them both. </p><p>A classic space opera with new twists, writ large and chock full of thrilling action, cutting dialogue and romance of many hues and shades.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inklesspen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inklesspen/gifts).



> Prompt: I would like you to think very hard about the terms "weapon" and "handler" and see where you go from there. I expect there may be some pitch/pale quadrant confusion. No humanstuck please!

In the 3,027th year of her reign, Her Imperious Condescension was violently and summarily deposed by the first Heiress to survive to maturity, Feferi Peixes. Simultaneously, three generations of hatchings struck throughout the fleet, overthrowing the existing haemocaste in an act of such coordination and unity the old guard reeled more from the paradigm shift than from the actual rebellion. Virtually overnight, the Alternian Empire became a kinder, more open society. At least, superficially.

* * *

It is abyssally dark in the quarters of the Empress. What few lights there are remain unlit. The door slides open briefly, blasting the room with the dim light of the seadweller section of the ship and a figure steps through. In stark contrast to the Condesce, Feferi Peixes wears light, diaphanous gowns of pearl and rainbow colours. Appearances are important, she holds. And deceiving. 

With a sigh she strips down to her undergarments: a skin-tight one piece of the same silk-thin reactive armour the Condesce wore. She casts her jewelry aside roughly, leaving only the heavy gold necklaces about her neck. Then, lightly, she slips into the dark, icy waters of the small pool. It is one of the few luxuries she allows herself, a holdover from the previous empress. Spaceships do not have the space or capacity to spare for something as pointless as a pool. Save in the case of the Conde- herself. 

She’d probably have to come up with a title for herself, for the short-term, at least. Until she could abdicate and hand over the reins of power to an elected body of some sort. With another sigh, Feferi leans back, letting her body submerge wholly, letting the bracing water slide through her gills. The sudden influx of cool oxygen wakes her to hyperconciousness, and with a shock she realizes she isn’t alone in the pool.

In a splash she tears the necklace from her neck and leaps at the unseen trespasser, levelling the transformed jewelry as a spear. Angry tyrian bioluminescence floods from her, and in the flickering light she sees the thing waiting for her.

Huge, violet eyes in an unnaturally pale face stare back at her, framed by white hair cut short to reveal small, rounded ears. Its skin looks soft, completely unarmoured. Impossibly frail, spindly and subtly _alien_. Slender arms are cast back over the sides of the pool casually, as if at home. It is a small thing, likely half her size. It smiles, showing pearly, rounded teeth, and Feferi thinks it might be mocking her. 

“Ah, excellent. The soft-stepping equalist has something of a warrior spirit to her. Though, I suppose it makes sense, given that you managed to kill Meenah.”

That sets Feferi back more than the thing’s appearance. There aren’t five people in the entire Empire who know the Condesce’s true name anymore. “What… how do you know that name?”

“Because it is my business to know things,” the thing snaps. “Get used to it, Feferi Peixes, if you want your species to survive.”

“What are you talking about? Who are you? _What_ are you? You don’t look like any species in the Empire I’ve ever read or heard about.”

“No, not of your Empire. Come now, Meenah said your head was always in the clouds, full of fantasy. Though you proved her wrong, there must have been some truth to your bookishness.”

Feferi blinks, her mind racing from alien to fantasy, cataloguing every being she’s ever heard of, taking in the features again and suddenly it hits her with the force of a tidal wave. She staggers under the realization.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“You’re gone. All dead. For… for millennia… aeons!”

“True enough, or close to.” It stands, dripping wet cloth clinging to rounded curves that suggest _female, mammal_ to Feferi, further facts to solidify her terrible deduction. She was right, it is about half her height, but she backs away from it, full of fear that she hasn’t felt since realization her life was forfeit unless she defeated the Condesce. She suddenly realizes that her psychics are being muffled and with another thrill of terror, of despair she becomes aware of the monstrous psychic presence the alien in front of her has, enough to dwarf even that of dear Gl’bgolyb. 

“What do you want?” Feferi forces out.

“I want to save the Universe,” the thing from beginning of time says simply, reaching for her. “And I can’t have you de-clawing my best weapon.”


	2. Decommissioning

Your uniform is ridiculously stiff, starched to almost impossible standards. It itches like nobody’s business and while you’re all for the flashy gold braiding and medals, right now they all just weigh on you. You know you’re not here for anything approaching a good reason, and you silently dread the ranting dressing-down you know is coming.

Your name is Vriska Serket, your rank is captain, and your behaviour is about as perfectly troll as possible. Or would have been, in the old days. As a member of the new hatchings, you are supposed to show more restraint, understanding and pacifism. You are straight-up terrible at all of these things, which was halfways useful during the rebellion, but you suspect that your attitude is about to get your ass discharged or worse. 

As if on cue, the young troll at the door looks up from his screen and says, “High Threshecutioner Vantas will see you now.”

Joy.

You get up and march to your inevitable doom. Entering the small office is like entering a warzone made of paper and folders. You blink.

“Holy crap, Vantas, don’t you have secretaries for this stuff?”

Red eyes flash up angrily at you from behind a desk as the short troll slaps a folder shut and tosses it on a pile that you assume is an outbox. 

“Really, Serket? You’re gonna lecture me on tidiness? You?”

You shrug. He’s got a point. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Now, since I know you aren’t as bulge-splittingly stupid as reports make you out to be, I know you know why you’re here.”

That didn’t seem like it called for a response to you, so you keep your mouth shut and brace for an infamously long Vantas dressing-down. You can’t even tune him out, because one: he has a tendency of drawing your attention back to the matter of your own bloodthirstiness and incompetence at irregular intervals, and you have to respond then or he’ll just take longer. And two, he’s actually kind of funny in an obscene, filth-spewing way. Gl’bgolyb knows, he’s never this creative in front of the rank and file.

The lecture goes on and on about how you need to show more restraint and how its no longer acceptable to blast an Old Guard cruiser out of space and time because it refused to answer comms or lead a charge yourself for the express purpose of decapitating an abusive old instructor. You know this, and you don’t really care. You’re too old to change your ways, and Karkat and the rest should know you’re not about to suddenly moult into a kinder, less reckless Vriska. That’s why you were commander of the shock troops, anyways. Not like they had a better place for you. 

“... seem to be completely fucking unwilling to change even an iota of your heinous fucking behaviour that you are being removed from your command.”

You blink again. Well that was direct, if not unexpected. You open your mouth and then shut it before Karkat even finishes holding his hand up. He frowns at your unexpected behaviour but continues.

“There’s clearly no place for your twelve-parsec wide mean streak in the main Alternian forces, and we can’t risk you corrupting successive hatchings with your bloody-minded recklessness. But the Empress in her _infinite wisdom_ ” and wow, that was biting, even for Karkat, “seems to have some sort of plan for you.”

And with that he waves at a bookshelf and throws himself haphazardly at his chair. The shelves slide up and into the room strides eight feet of tyrian-blooded Empress. Hell, Feferi got tall. But her smile remains the same, lighting up the room as she _flounces_ into it. She looks between the two of you and giggles.

“That’s what I like about you two. No silly bows or salutes or anything!”

“Yeah, like I’m going to bow to a girl I whupped into shape on the coasts of Erkania.” You almost regret the words as they leave your mouth, but Feferi folds you into a crushing hug, lifting you a solid foot off the floor. Vantas gives you a sour look from behind her back, and you can’t help but grin and give him a finger as you pat Feferi awkwardly on the back.

“Kay, I get it, you could crush me easily now, I concede, your Highness or whatever,” you joke. Feferi puts you down, sticking her tongue out at you. She looks around, and finding two chairs, clears them off for the two of you to sit in. You do so, cautiously.

“So, like Karkles said,” and the way he bristles at that tells you that was her petty revenge for his earlier comment, ”we need to present the Alternian forces as less war-mongering now, but unlike pre-rebellion plans, it has come to my attention that there are ongoing threats to the safety of the u- the Empire.”

You catch the slip, but have no idea what to make of it. Maybe some new terms she’s coming up to make nice with other species? 

“And there’s no room for me in your shiny new happy place, yeah, I get it,” you say blithely, kind of surprised at the lack of bitterness in your voice. Maybe it’s better this way.

“But I want to offer you a new position. And I need you to understand that you are one hundred percent free to accept or deny this offer, okay?”

You quirk an eyebrow. “What’s the offer?”

“You would be working separate from the Alternian forces, often completely alone and without support. You could be moving from the heart of the Empire to the darkest depths of space, but no matter where you go, I need you to understand there can’t be any tie between you and the Empire, official or no. You would be a renegade and without any protection from us.” 

You shift with nervous energy. On the one hand, it sounds a lot like exile. On the other, it sounds _right up your alley._

“What would I be doing?”

Feferi looks at Vantas apologetically. “I can’t tell you that here, but once you reach your contact, it will be explained to you. I promise that it will be of great benefit to the Empire.”

You take a second to bask in the hurt and confusion on Vantas’ face before posing one last question.

“And if I refuse?”

“You get a discharge with full honours and pension, back to your hi-”

“I accept.” The words are spit out so quickly you’re barely aware of having made the choice. Feferi hides a small smile and you want to hate the clever thing, but you can’t muster it. She’s giving you a chance to adventure, and more importantly be _you_.

“Excellent. Let’s get started.”

The High Threshecutioner starts. “What, already?”

“No time like the present. Her actions at Sepsis IV are common knowledge by now and everyone on this ship saw her come in here. No one will suspect anything if she gets discharged at this juncture. Though I think this meeting has been a little quiet for a full on Serket-Vantas disagreement.”

Feferi gives a wicked smile, and you have to join in, recollecting the near brawls you and Karkat got into over strategy and tactics during the rebellion. Vantas just rolls his eyes. You pop your neck and roll your arms in the stiff jacket. Feferi chitters in glee and waves you two at each other. And that’s how you get thrown out of the Alternian forces for unchecked aggression and assaulting a superior officer.

* * *

Finally back in some comfortable fatigues, you’re waiting for your assigned shuttle to be finished prepping. Your attention is only half on the skittering carapacians tending to it, the majority of it on your closest remaining friend. This is gonna get awkward. You’re like, 99% sure.

“I have been a terrible moirail.”

Yup.

“Ah hell, Kans, it’s not your fault you picked the worst goddamn troll in existence to try to pacify.”

“That is not what I am alluding to, though your observation is certainly not incorrect.”

You give a bark of a laugh, and that gets a small smile out of her. “And now my ineptitude, my willing negligence of my duties has resulted in your discharge.”

You have no goddamn idea what she's going on about, but you should probably put an end to this colossal misunderstanding before it gets entirely out of hand. “Whoa, whoa, slow your roll, Maryam. Let's be clear: I decked Vantas because he was _literally asking for it_.”

You are so proud you get to slide that truthhood (truthhood? Is that even a word?) under the radar.

“It is just such an attitude which I should have been endeavouring to temper. Honestly, Vriska, will you not let me take an iota of responsibility for my failure?”

“Your failure? Sounds like you're giving yourself too much credit and me not enough. I ruin absolutely everything I get involved with, Kanaya. Everyone realized it before you, is all.”

“In this situation, at least, that is incorrect. I believe our moirallegiance failed because-”

The carapaces are packing up, and what looks like a manager is ticking things off a clipboard. You assume you're going to be boarding soon. You're pretty sure this is going to go from awkward to painful, so it's time to turn on the anti-charm and end this before that happens.

“Our moirallegiance failed because I am one hundred and eight percent allergic to other people's opinions, care and instructions. Trust me,” you say, picking up your duffel and making for the ramp, “this is for the best.”

“Oh by our lusii, Vriska Serket, I am trying to tell you that I am flushed for you, not pale!”

While the rest of the bay seems to freeze at the exclamation you keep walking, even though that knocked you for a loop. Still, it gives you a chance to seal the deal.

“Oh, I know, Maryam. Best I take off before I ruin you too,” you call over your shoulder. Then you give her a casual wave and disappear inside. You are the best at burning bridges.

* * *

Lifting the flask from Vantas' pocket was the best part of the fight, you swear. You wonder if he's noticed yet. Then you figure it doesn't matter and take another swig. Bluh, the mutant likes his liquor sweet.

“No drinking on board.” One of the ratings tries to tell you, sternly. You give him a look. About a generation younger than you, you'd wager. Teal-blooded, though that doesn't mean much. Heh, suck it, Peixes. You never needed her ideals; you came to that conclusion long ago on your own. He probably did something to pull this detail. Why the hell you'd need a security detail to get dropped at the nearest spaceport is beyond you.

Done your cursory examination of the rating, you hold out the flask. He starts, probably thinking that you're offering him a drink. “No, you idiot. You see that symbol? Yeah. Big silver one. Yeah, that's the High Threshecutioner's. Now, if you've got a _brain_ in between those impressive horns, what do you think that means?”

The rating blinks and shifts uncertainly. “Um... uh...”

A snort from another one of the detail. Gold-blooded. Low-level psychic, if he's not a helmsman. “It means either it was a gift from the High Threshecutioner and there's more going on here than we're cleared to know or that she took it off him as a trophy when she beat the hell out of him. Either way, it means don't be a freaking implementsack, Hortace.”

“Okay, you, you get a drink.” You whip the flask around to him, under his nose. It wrinkles at the saccharine sweet smell, but he takes it from your grasp and pounds one back before handing it back.

“Yeah, Karkat has too much a bloody sweet tooth, if you ask me.”

There's a mumbled phrase from the teal-blood, Hortace that sounds suspiciously like “drinking on duty is against regulations” but you're feeling gracious and take no notice, taking another sip.

“Come off it, man. She's Vriska Serket. We wouldn't be able to stop her even if she was still in the Forces.” This comes from a rust-blood that reminds you a little too much of another one you know. Still, she has a point and you sketch a flourishing bow from your seat.

“Too fucking true. But flattery doesn't get you a drink, girlie, only displays of marginal competence.”

“Hear that, Salab? She called me competent.”

“ _Marginally_ , you unbelievable bulge-munch.”

You grin at the back-and-forth and settle back with another swig. Not quite to the camaraderie of actual banter, but you figure they'll get there. The rust-blood, Salab is eyeing your sprawl critically. You gesture at your frame.

“Like what you see?”

She snorts, blushes slightly but doesn't look away. “Sorry. You just don't look like... well. The stories.”

 _Now_ you sit up. “The stories?”

“Yeah, from the early days of the rebellion. It's like you were in every battle, this haemocaste-killing machine of-”

“Oh boy, here comes the fangirling.”

“I am _not_ \- she asked!”

“It's true. I did.” You nod magnanimously for her to continue. This could be a good way to pass the time.

* * *

“-and then Vantas _completely fucking decapitates_ the bloody clown, straight through fucking muscles like cables and that damn high-blood bone structure and blood is spurting everywhere and we're getting soaked and that's when I have to say, I absolutely have to say-

'Miracles, yo.'”

The compartment bursts out laughing at your latest tale which you have been illustrating at volume and with probably obscene gestures. They've been dragging them out of you, which is about as hard to do as operating a sanitary fountain tap. You wipe a cerulean tear from your eye and swig from the flask because your mouth is dry and this is _fun_ , and one of the things you're going to miss about the Forces.

Of course, that's when everything decides to go bulge-shaped. An alarm starts wailing, restraints snap down around you and the whole ship shudders.

“What the hell?”

The ratings are looking around in confusion but you're already unfastening the restraints. You stand smoothly, crouched slightly to deal with the cramped confines, and move to the cockpit door. You bang on the release and stick your head in.

“Report, pilot!”

Faceless behind the helmet, the carapacian pilot looks to you in what is still evidently a panic and blurts out, “Alternian cruiser! It's got us tractored and is hailing!”

“Well, put them through already.”

“I, uh, I don't take orders from you?”

A snarl and pulse of psychics that cause your eye to throb and you say, “Now you bloody well do.”

“Ye-yes ma'am,” the compliant little thing says.

A hologram pops up in front of you of some preening sea-dweller, and you've already got a suspicion about what's happening here.

“Oh good, the uppity little rebel answers herself. How decorous of you.”

“Yeah, I'm a fountain of good will. What do you want and why do you have us tractored?”

While the blithering idiot is running his mouth about avenging his matesprit that you brutally slaughtered above Sepsis IV, you snap finger-code orders to the ratings. _Prepare for boarding action. Target: Alternian Class-III Cruiser. Bridge. Full Purge._ By the time he's winding down, you're psychically implanting orders into the carapace and turning back into the crew compartment.

“Don't you turn your back on me, you low-blooded whore!” the idiot shrieks.

“Oh don't worry. We're gonna be face-to-face reeeeaaaal soon.”

You step into the crew compartment to face a set of shocked ratings. “So. Anyone got a pistol and maybe a sword for me?”

“What the hell just happened?” the teal-blood asks.

“Well, we got hijacked by a sea-dweller looking for revenge on me. Then I gave you all heads up what was going to happen next. And in about five seconds, our pilot is going to stop fighting the tractor beam and run us up to full speed to ram the cruiser.”

“What the hell...” the gold-blood begins.

“Brace for acceleration. And someone get me a bloody weapon, already.”

The engines on the small shuttle suddenly shift from full reverse to ramming speed and a manic grin splits your face. The rust-blood fumbles a blaster pistol in your direction as you slip into a restraint at the last second. You check the charge, hug it to your chest and then the world is noise and fire.

* * *

You can't remember where you got the sword from but it's doing its job fantastically, cutting down any charging Old Guard that get past the ratings' fire. You lost the gold-blood (whose name you never got) early on. His death, a psychic detonation, taking out an entire squad of the enemy seemed to put steel in the spines of your soldiers, giving them the confidence that they could do this; they could beat these odds. Good kids. Your Vision Eightfold backed that confidence up with nothing resembling subtlety, but they were too focused to even notice.

Your tiny squad steps over the corpses of the Old Guard that fell before your focused fire and rapid advance. This is what you are good at: headlong charges into lines of the enemy. You learned early on that fighting trolls was stupidly easy, because you knew from shared training how they were going to react. A moment spent crouching and you've set grenade traps for when the inevitable flanking attack disturbs them.

You spin into the next corridor and yell “Clear!” once you've determined that it is. Your squad follows shortly thereafter, and you repeat the process for the next two, until you finally hear the explosion from behind you.

“Hold your fire until I'm well into them,” you instruct them, and then you're sprinting through the opening doors straight into the other half of the pincer attack that the sea-dweller had been trying to set up. They have no idea what hits them until your sword is carving them up from within their lines, and your blaster is hissing its way through their guts. You register their shock and the spike of fear, and then take that fear, multiply it and slam it back into them with your psychics. In the confused melee they pay no attention to the two ratings snapping off killing shots into their ranks.

Before long, you're covered in a rainbow of blood, heaving breathless in the midst of a room of corpses. Your little squad enters the blood-spattered room in something like disbelief. You flash them a smile.

“Told you we could do this. Come on. Not far now.”

“Hold on,” the teal-blood, Horace, Hortace?, says. He moves to a computer console and taps away at the chitinboard.

“What's the hold up, Hortace?” you say, pretty sure you have it right.

“Just... a minute...” he says, frowning. You move over and see that he's in the planetary assault menus. You look around, and yeah, this is the logistics room. Next is an anteroom and the bridge.

“Alright, done.” You look back at him. “I've released the drones from their stasis bays and set them to conduct a full purge of the ship.”

You stare at him for what feels like a full minute before mutely handing over Vantas' flask. “Just keep it. Holy shit. I'm gonna have to remember that one.”

The rating grins and looks over to the rust-blood with pride. She rolls her eyes, but returns the smile. Straightening, she shoulders her blaster rifle and looks to you.

“You said we're almost there?”

“Yeah. I want you two to fortify the next room and kill anyone who comes up behind us. Strip these guys of all ammo and grenades and whatever. I go into the bridge, kill everyone except the helmsman, and lock down the ship ASAP and then a quick message back to the fleet, and we're home free.”

“Oh, that's it?” she jokes.

You gesture at the carnage around you. “Objections?”

“None, sir.”

“Can the sir, I'm not Forces any more.”

“Understood, ma'am.”

You roll your eyes and make the motions to advance into the next room. Once they're set up, with Salab behind a massive heavy blaster one of the corpses was carrying, and Hortace with a stack of grenades large enough to blow a hive apart, you hit the door panel and step into the next room.

The door slams shut behind you and before you is an entire bridge crew pointing weapons at you. Well, almost an entire bridge crew. There appear to be several corpses already...including the damn helmsman, for fuck's sake. You look at the sea-dweller captain in annoyance.

“Really? Executions? For what, incompetency?”

“The filth suggested parlaying with you.”

“That's a new one.”

“Of course. Inconceivable that-”

“No, I meant executions for competency.”

The sea-dweller goes an apoplectic violet and levels his sword at you. Before he can get another set of words out, you cut him off.

“Look, you've clearly massively underestimated the forces arrayed against you. The intelligent thing to do would be some kind of retreat and reassessment, and parlaying would have bought that. At the very least you could have surrounded us properly, instead of letting us run roughshod through your entire crew, like, holy hell. I killed a looooot of people today...” You trail off into laughter as the chemical stew that's been rushing through your veins suddenly lets up. That's about when the blasterfire and explosions start up behind you.

“That'll be the remains of your crew being relentlessly cut down by proper fire lanes and an entrenched enemy.”

“THERE ARE ONLY TWO OF THEM! WE WILL CRUSH THEIR PITIFUL RESISTANCE UNDER THE SHEER WEIGHT OF OUR NUMBERS!” Spittle flies from the captain's mouth as his face gets even more hilariously purple.

“Two... plus your entire complement of drones.”

The looks of abject fear on the bridge crew's faces is priceless and makes your job even easier.

“What, did you think I was coming up here so you could have your precious duel? I came here to get control of the ship. I came here to _win_ , you poncy peacock.”

The ruddy face, already whitening from the idea of drones running rampant in the ship, suddenly gets a bit more confident, pasting a smirk across its features.

“Then you shouldn't have just walked in front of what amounts to a firing squad, Serket. I will admit that your combat expertise is overwhelming, but your bravado has been your downfall, as I knew it would.”

“You might want to check where your firing squad is pointing their weapons.”

It is virtually impossible to get a troll to kill themselves via psychics. Even alpha-level gold-bloods can't do it reliably. The troll will to survive is just too strong. That's something that can be exploited though. The captain has enough time to look over his shoulder and take in the crew all pointing their weapons at each other before you scream _FIRE_ through their minds.

The crack-hiss of hand-held blaster weapons swallows the fading sounds of battle briefly, and then the entire bridge crew topples over dead.

Face white as a deepfish, the seadweller turns back to you in time to get your sword shoved through his mouth and out the back of his head. You drive the corpse straight into the floor in one smooth motion and head to a console where you tap out a few well-practised commands and vent the entire ship into space, excepting the bridge and the ante-chamber.

Leaning back in the chair you vent the last of the adrenaline and battle-stress out of you with an explosive sigh. Suddenly very tired, physically and mentally, you begin to hurt from a dozen burns and cuts, but you smile languidly all the same.

You are really, really good at what you do.

* * *

“It was an honour, ma'am.”

Salab's last words to you are still ringing in your ears as you move her and Hortace's bodies from the antechamber into the slightly cleaner bridge. A single drone had managed to make its way to the room on its purge protocol. Salab had finally killed it by jamming her heavy blaster down its throat and vapourizing its insides. That's where you found her, bleeding out from two lost limbs and a hole in her sternum. Troll biology or not, that was a death sentence.

You feel incredibly proud of them, guilty for your delay, and vaguely sad for reasons that confuse you.

Those ratings are getting so many posthumous citations and medals. So many. All of them. All the citations. Even if you have to wring Karkat's fucking neck yourself. But first, you have to get their remains back to the Fleet. You barely know how to use a communications console, but you're pretty sure you can signal back, even if its not exactly secure, or accurate. Whatever. They'll come, if only to investigate an Old Guard cruiser.

You are about to hit send, when your thoughts are interrupted.

 _I would not do that if I were you_. The voice is a ghosting whisper in your mind, but undeniably there and unmistakably psychic.

“Oh what now?!”

 _Calm down. I am not a threat. But if you transmit that signal, there are at least two Old Guard ships that will find you before the Fleet does_.

“Right. And why-”

 _You should trust me because I am the contact that Feferi Peixes instructed you to meet. The ident-code is 1881992413. Can we please dispense with the hostilities and evacuate you before you decide to take on_ another _cruiser on your own?_

Your head is reeling from your exertions and now the stress of keeping up a psychic conversation. “Okay, fine. How should I get out of here then? The shuttle is a mess and-”

_-the carapace is dead, thanks to your venting the atmosphere._

“Oh come on, they can do without atmosphere for like, an hour!”

_If they are conscious. He was already dying from the ramming maneuver._

“Okay, can we get off the 'rail on Serket train' and get back on track with getting me out of here?”

_I am sure I do not know what you mean. And you will have to pilot your ship towards mine. I am already heading towards you, but I see no reason not to speed up the process._

“Yeah, sure, agreed. Where the hell are you?”

 _Two systems over_.

You are silent for a long while as you try to wrap your head around that. “Okay, ignoring the pants-shitting implications of that psychically, the helmsman's dead, so FTL is a no-go.”

_So long as your sublight drives still work, there is an external mechanism relatively nearby. Make for the gate at these coordinates. If you cannot operate the drives, I can provide limited instruction._

“Wait, gate? Stupid huge dangerous piece of restricted alien technology that no one knows how to operate?”

_Your ancestors knew how to operate them. The Condesce suppressed the information and started the helmsman program to forestall their threat and your species’ reliance on them._

You have no idea what to say. “...wow.”

_Can you fly yourself there?_

“Yeah, yeah. Gimme a sec. Just head to these coordinates?” you say, running through the implanted numbers and trying to align the ship with them. It takes you a few trips between consoles, but you think you have it.

_Good. Once there, I will implant the transmission you need to make in order to begin the procedure._

“And this is safe?”

_At the present, yes._

“Yeah wow, you've got that ominous, foreboding thing down pat. Good job.”

_Thank you._

* * *

Being fired through an alien artifact at faster-than-light speeds isn't nearly as terrifying as you'd think. The whole thing is kind of dull, after the sense of ceremony that came with signalling the damn thing.

You blame your contact.

* * *

When you come out of FTL, there's a brief sense of disorientation as your brain tries to register the massive differences in velocity and reality before giving up. You'd stick with helmsmen, personally.

“Yo, contact-person. You listening?”

_Yes._

“I'm here, now what?”

_Come to a full stop. I'll bring my ship around and you can spacewalk over._

“Seriously? Can't I just get a shuttle or something?”

_Suit yourself. Either option will require extravehicular activity as someone appears to have rammed a craft into the shuttle bay, completely annihilating its structural integrity._

“Oh my fuck would you just shut up about my methods.”

_No one is talking about your methods, Vriska Serket. I wonder, is this self-obsession a defense mechanism of some kind, to-_

“Fine! I will find a friggin' space suit and hurl myself out of a hatch at your bloody ship. Happy?”

You go do that.

* * *

The ship is as dark as space. Only the bare glimmer of far away stars on its slick surface gives you any hint that it is there. You float towards it, small, helpless and distinctly uncomfortable. The shape is hard to make out, but after a moment, you realize that is because it is moving, shifting. Opening. It unfurls eight massive prongs, as if it is a spider is welcoming you into its embrace.

You decide you don't hate it nearly as much as you do its owner.

A dim rectangular light appears offset from the centre, where the legs meet in a bulbous, decidedly non-spidery mass. A hatch, you figure, and with careful adjustments to your vector, steer yourself towards it. You pass through it just as the harsh cold of vacuum begins to leech the heat from your shitty spacesuit. It closes behind you and dim light floods the small room you find yourself in. An airlock, then. You orient yourself with the obvious interior hatch and apparently just in time, as the ship's owner decides then to turn on the gravity. You drop heavily to the floor, absorbing the impact in your knees and gauging the gravity. Slightly less than Alternian standard, but not so much as to be uncomfortable.

With a ding, your spacesuit informs you atmosphere is building, and once it's up to an acceptable level, you ease your helmet up over your horns and shake out your hair. Your nose twitches in the air, unused to shipboard air that isn't stale or tinged with copper or salt. The door opens silently and lights slowly come up on the other side, revealing a largely featureless corridor, plated with dark metal. A set of running lights blinks into existence and after a pause, they begin to flash down one end of the hall.

 _Follow them, if you please_.

Having nothing better to do, you do.

You notice belatedly that the lights are slowly getting brighter as you walk through the halls. You think you're walking towards the centre in a weird spiral. The halls are definitely curving, at least. They also have a minimum of decoration etched into them. At least, that's what you think it is. You're not sure what the angular lines could be for other than to break up the visual monotony. You sure as hell hope its not writing. That would be... creepy somehow.

Finally the lights stop at a door like all the others that you've passed. Suppressing a slight twinge of fear and uncertainty you step up to it and find it swooshes open silently. Then you're wincing from the bright glare within. Apparently the lights weren't adjusting you enough.

Inside is a space much, much larger than you would expect, probably much larger than is even possible to hold in the center of the ship. It appears to be a massive crystalline beach upon which pearlescent waves crash quietly. A few bare, ragged trees are scattered about, like flotsam set upright haphazardly. You look up and the clear blue sky goes on forever, spotted with pure white clouds that glimmer as they shed clear, chiming rain.

Completely at odds with this is the desk and chair in the centre of your vision. An alien is sat there, tiny frail hands steepled purposefully. It's clad in a dress so dark it seems to drink the light from the air and it swirls with deep violet and blue hues regularly. Its body has striking similarities with your own, in the manner of species of the golden mean and you're pretty sure it is female, or an analogue of such. That's just straight-up conjecture because you have legitimately no idea what this thing is and you've run into almost every alien species in the Empire.

“Alright, I give up. What are you?”

“Excellent question, Vriska,” it says and its voice is soft, and much lower than you thought it would be. It speaks Alternian with a cute accent, not nearly forceful or harsh enough, but clearly and with inflections that remind you of Kanaya. It stands and it barely comes up to your chest, puny thing that it is. But you're not an idiot, and you don't underestimate it.

“I am, among other things, your contact. My name is Rose Lalonde, and you may call me that, or Seer, because that is what I do. But the answer to your question, I believe, is _human_.”

Huh. “No shit?”

The flicker of a frown isn't much, but it's enough. You have a feeling this is going to work out great.


	3. Operation: Shovelbum

You don't see the point of having your own bloody spaceship if you have to take public liners everywhere. You're staring out a viewing portal on the side of the aerospace shuttle heading down to the surface of the dusty mining planet below and wondering if you're ever going to see any of the perks of being a secret agent or whatever it is that you're supposed to be here. The Seer was pretty opaque about the whole deal, which was unfortunately understandable considering that she didn't even believe you were up to snuff yet.

“Your initial mission was to be a test of your combat skills,” she'd said, “but I think your, ah, unique arrival, sufficed to prove those.”

At this point she rose from her desk in the ridiculous holo-room (you were supposing, for all you knew this freak alien had access to even more outlandish technology) and handed you an old dataslate. Once in your hands, it activated with what looked like a mission briefing.

“This mission will be a test of your less violent skills. Stealth, diplomacy, negotiation, the like.”

You'd given her a look. “Really? Me. Diplomacy. Did you, like, read my dossier?”

“Quite. Frankly, I expect you to fail and Feferi to send me someone with a broader, more useful skillset.”

Bristling is the term for what you did at that. “Sure, count your cluckbeasts before they've hatched, _Seer_. We'll see how this turns out.”

Yeah, that's what you'd said, but now you're about an hour and a half from what you'd call mission start or touchdown and you still have no idea how you're going to go about this. Reviewing the sparse details in your head (damn human made you memorize the slate) you know that you have to find and secure a particular rectangular black rock from an escavaterrorist encampment. Too big to conceal on your person, but small and light enough to carry with ease. Barring being able to secure it, you had been given some kind of scanner/transmitter to leave in contact with it for “several hours” at least.

No idea how you were going to accomplish that, given the dozens of well-armed guards around the place. Well. No idea how you were going to do that stealthily. Apparently you weren't supposed to turn the camp into an abattoir and just make off with the friggin' rock.

Ehn. You were probably just going to wing it.

* * *

In a truly shocking turn of events, you did not wing it. You spent your first day on the planet scoping the camp out under the guise of looking for work. Sure, a completely whole blue-blood looking for menial labour was strange, but the dead-eyed look you gave people who raised the question quickly quelled any more. After the first day, you've got a basic map of the camp sketched out in your head with guard patrols and likely high-security areas noted.

Of course, that's considering this Lalonde isn't jerking you around and the damn thing isn't a common curio or some shit. Idly, you think at volume something along those lines to see if she's listening. If she is, she stays silent.

After confirming that the patrols don't vary much at night, you decide to turn in early. You figure that if you give someone a mental push you could get hired early in the day and that'll allow you to get a closer look at the camp's set-up, even if it'd be in the guise of a grunt. Still, even a play-it-by-ear shock trooper like you knows the value of intel.

Your path to the local divehive that you're shacking up in takes you past the camp again, but you keep your head down and stick in the crowds. So you're pretty surprised when someone calls,

“Guards! That's her! Apprehend that blue-blood immediately!”

You look up in shock. You know that voice. Hell, you know it well. You know it _very fucking intimately_.

Aradia _fucking_ Megido is pointing directly at you with a triumphant expression on her face as a pair of hulking guards and a _fucking drone_ bear down on you.

* * *

Don't cause a scene, Vriska.

Maintain your cover, Vriska.

Don't slaughter the entire encampment, Vriska.

 _Give up and surrender immediately, Vriska_. Holy hell you hate this job.

Now you're sat in a really uncomfortable metal chair, chained to a table in a bare room and waiting for whoever's in charge of this camp to decide what to do with you. You have no idea what line Megido fed them, but it was enough to get you bodily tossed around some, stripped of what weapons you had (“It's a fucking sidearm! Everyone carries them, you piss-blooded moron!”) and then locked up in here. You cannot believe your luck.

But before you can really get your pity/rage on the door swings open and Megido waltzes in like she owns the place. So, correction: you're edging towards rage here.

“What the hell, Megido?”  
“What the hell, Serket?”

The two of you blink and freeze at the awkward, simultaneous mash-up that spills out of your mouths. She has the audacity to blush, and you just scowl. You just wave, clumsily, chained as you are.

“Captors first.”

The blush turns into a full-body flush as you realize what you just said. Ha, oh man, that was classic. You didn't even mean that one. Megido's grip indents the cheap metal table and you see her visibly compose herself.

“Mind telling me what you're doing here, Serket?”

“What, didn’t you hear? Looking for work.”

“Yeah, like I believe that. Even after a dishonourable discharge, you'd still be able to get work as a mercenary. At the drop of a hat.”

“Shit, you know about that already? How fucking fast does information travel out here?”

“Please, a big name from the rebellion like you? It's everywhere.”

Except you know that's not true. Vantas and Peixes wanted to make your discharge quiet, so by the time it _did_ eventually leak you would have had time to disappear. Which means...

“Sure you weren't just keeping an ear to the ground for me, Megido?” you drawl, leaning back, eyes half-lidded and your most grating smirk plastered across your face.

The way she leans forward and narrows her eyes, like she's about to start something, confirms it for you. Holy hell, you got dropped into the only fucking locale in the Empire with someone who hates you _just enough_ and _black enough_ to jump to possibly the only innocent conclusion here. And let's be honest, it is not at all innocent and it is _exactly_ the sort of shit you would do.

“Who the hell would want to keep track of trash like you?”

You lean forward and growl, “Probably someone who who spends the bulk of her time up to her elbows in trash for a living.”

You are fantastic at pissing people off. Really, it's one of your most marketable skills. You've a real talent for it. So its no surprise that Megido freezes and then hauls her head back with that impressive rack for a real skull-cracker of a headbutt.

Of course, you're ready for her, as she's as civilian as its possible to be and her body language may as well have been screaming “I'm going to butt your nose in!” So you duck your head as if to receive the smash on your forehead. But you angle your straighter horns to slide up in between hers, lock them and the hurl yourself backwards, hauling Aradia over the table and overturning it besides. To her credit, she recovers in mid-flight and slams into you, hands on your shoulders, shoving you to the ground beneath her.

And that's when things get _really_ interesting.

* * *

Hours later you are deliciously sore, utterly wired and staring up at the bland ceiling of Aradia's quarters. Your breath comes in quick pants and the sopor sticks to your lanky, half-covered form. You are loathe to admit it, but that was amazing and you kind of really needed it. Given the fact that Aradia has gone straight from twitching and screeching to passed-out, you're willing to bet she did too. Maybe not as much, because your desire to roll her over and pin her there while doing things to her is still pretty strong, but you don't really foresee her complaining.

But as fun as the exertion was, it's still exertion and you are in need of rehydration. As quietly as you know how, you slip out of the too-small recuperacoon, coming up in a crouch. You take a moment to admire Aradia's filled-out frame. By all rights you should be a larger specimen, but her genes treated her right and she's very nearly your size and more bulky. Her muscle fibres don't bunch as tightly as yours so there's pleasantly _more_ of her than you, and her strength is almost enough to keep you pinned. You let her think it's enough.

Then you pad quietly to the small cookblock, eyes wide and mouth slightly open for better hearing. Her rooms are mostly bare though, so you manage to not knock anything over. You almost make it to the hygiene tap and then reconsider. You're not confident in this planet's water supply, and besides, what kind of on-again, off-again kismesis would you be if you didn't raid your partner's meal vault.

You are about to grab some manner of bottle from the inside when something catches your eye. You wonder if you're on some kind of chemical high because this is legitimately too good to be true. Doing your best to focus on the image ingrained into your brain you step over to the patch of darkness to take a closer look and yep, they match. The rock in front of you is more detailed but matches the dimensions and description the Seer provided. Etched lines can still be seen around it and you suspect it is at least partially metallic.

Looking around furtively, you ponder your best bet here. You could easily grab this thing and bolt now, after dressing. But that might wake Aradia up and besides which, you have no idea when the next shuttle offworld is. You curse your lack of planning and make a note to think these things through next time. Still, can't blame yourself too much, this is your first gig as a spy.

Deciding against the grab 'n' run, and with a means to kill “several hours” you decide to set the transmitter. Which still presents the issue of possibly waking Aradia, but probably less than trying to get fully dressed. You quickly discover that things are slightly more complicated because for the _life_ of you, you cannot locate your jacket where the thing is stashed. Your swears and curses are about to get audible when you finally find the thing, the last place you expected to find it: the bloody garment tree.

You hit the button to start it up and spend a moment trying to figure out how you're supposed to place it before giving up with a shrug and just leaving it face down on the thing. Given the way it lights up briefly, you're pretty sure it's working? Pretty sure. Not entirely.

That's when you hear the stirring and freeze. Aradia seems to have woken up. Quickly you glance around and find the bottle, audibly cracking the cap open. The sounds still from the other room.

“Vriska? What the hell are you doing in my kitchen.”

You give it a moment to emulate a guilty pause, before venturing, “Uh, raiding your meal vault, you stuck-up rust-blood.”

Then you open the thing again and grab an identical bottle, as you're pretty sure from the smell this stuff's alcoholic. You stroll back to the respite block and lean cockily on the door frame. With a lazy smile, you take a chug from the bottle and try not to make a face at the unfamiliar liquid. Then,

“Well, these things were all terribly cooped up and looking for a good home. Figured I'd liberate them.”

Aradia straightens in the 'coon, the sopor receding to below her chest. Purely in the interests of selling your character, you don't even try to hide your attention. Purely.

“Those are _mine_ ,” she says, her voice a challenge, but not without a playful edge.

“Were,” you remind her, waggling your eyebrows. “I liberated them. Try to keep up, Megido.”

She's about to say something else but you toss her the unopened bottle and while she's busy lunging for that you close the distance and leap into the recuperacoon with a splash, straddling her. You catch her surprised gaze as you press in close to her warm form, feel her bulge twitch at your nearness and then your mouth covers the top of her bottle. With a grinding snap of your jaws, you pry the cap off the bottle top and spit it over the side.

“Revolting,” she says.

“-ly hot,” you complete for her. Your own bulge is unsheathing against her and you can feel her breath quicken. You clink you bottles together and prepare to blow those several hours. You cannot _believe_ your luck.

* * *

Aradia's an early riser, but you're even earlier and even though parts of you _hurt to move_ you're already dressed by the time she stumbles into her ablution trap. And the transmitter is safely stored away. You hesitate over leaving, but decide the mission comes first, and besides which, you should play to your strengths. Which involve being a bag of tools.

You leave a note and take off.

* * *

The vid she leaves in your inbox is less angry and more disappointed and you think maybe you fucked that one up a bit _too bad_.

* * *

“Your luck,” the Seer begins, somewhere between bemused and irritated, “is so inconceivably extreme that I can scarcely lend credence to it.”

With a smirk, you kick back on the apparent sand dune next to her desk, which you assume is some kind of couch in reality, since it is actually supporting your weight. With a little observation and physical probing you're starting to work out the actual dimensions of this ludicrous space of beach and waves.

“What can I say, I have all of the luck.”

“Indeed. While I was not unaware of your attachment to Ms. Megido, I had not counted on her already being there, her tenure as excavation supervisor not beginning for a great many-”

“Wait, what the hell? 'Not unaware of-' Are you going through my fucking mind for my personal details?”

“No, I assure you neither our relationship nor your use has progressed to the stage where that is necessary. Ms. Megido simply registered you as her kismesis several sweeps ago, which was duly reflected in your dossier.”

You mouth “registered you as her kismesis” silently, and mull exactly how bad you have fucked up here.

“Oh, I wouldn't worry about it. I expect she did so simply to avoid the cull, prior to Feferi taking the throne.”

Yeah, that sounds legit. Yeah, you're gonna run with that. “So, are we at the point now where you rummage around in my head for personal details or what?”

“Heavens no. Perhaps I was misleading. Forgive my lack of fluency in your tongue. I meant that if we progress to that stage, things will have gone horrifically, irrevocably wrong and we are not nearly at that stage.”

“You know, saying it like so is making it sound like that is a foregone conclusion.”

“Historically speaking, I would not put that outside the realms of possibility.”

You rub your eyes in frustration. “Ok! I get it, you're some kind of superpsychic with fantastic fortune-telling powers, good for you. At some point, could I please get _some_ kind of briefing on what it is that I am doing here?”

The pale alien is silent a moment, before nodding. “I believe I can provide such. While I do not wish you to believe that your trial period is over, your performance to date has been almost mythologic in its competence. The great sage Fleming would be impressed, I dare say.”

Yeah, that meant jack-all to you and you make sure that your expression conveys such.

“Well, to the point then. You have been apprised that the real reason for your discharge was to distance you from the Empire at large. While that is true, it is also itself a cover. You are, for better or for worse, now entirely in my service.”

Your single, crooked eyebrow is apparently not what she was expecting. Good. Let her run her mouth. In your experience, the ones who like the sound of their own voice give the best intel.

“As to your question of what you are supposed to be doing here, the answer is simple: more of the same. That artefact that you scanned potentially contained important information about the threat facing this galaxy. And while that particular example was too corrupt to provide any useful intelligence, the fact that the extraction method worked is a step in the right direction.”

As much as you are trying to make a show of being disinterested in her, this is actually incredibly interesting stuff. And Lalonde can apparently tell. Of course she can tell, she makes alpha-level gold-bloods look like children solving puzzle rhombuses.

“You have questions.”

“You got a gift for understatement.”

“Thank you. Please, ask, and expedite this.”

“Hell, where do I begin? Why not with 'threat facing this galaxy?'”

“Indeed. Previous civilizations have given it several names, and some of the ones that translate adequately into Alternian are 'Lords of Space and Time' and 'Horrorterrors.'”

A chill runs up your spine. You've heard that term before. Feferi once offered to introduce you to one.

“Oh yes, the young empress cares for something known as a horrorterror in the depths of your home planet. But I could not be moved to comment on whether it is or is not one of the creatures of legend. In particular, it seems to have a particularly fond bent towards your civilization. So if it is, it is a renegade and it is certainly not speaking to me.”

“Right, casual abuse of telepathy asi-”

“Please, Vriska Serket. For some reason you are screaming your thoughts aloud in this place. In the field you are _exceedingly_ more reserved, thank what gods remain.”

Huh. Duly noted, you suppose.

“Anyways. These rock-boxes-artefact things? More information please, even if it is guesswork.”

“Hmm. I admit, much of it is unsubstantiated. But evidence suggests that they are, well, black boxes of a bygone civilization. Beyond some vague whisperings passed down through the ages as to possible sites, there is little other information.”

“Right. Not gonna lie here, Lalonde, this sounds six kinds of crazy,” and oh god, what is wrong with you why would you say that in front of a psychic that could crush you in her mind, “but you seem like a smart lady. You believe all this... why?”

She is quiet for a long time, turning away from you. She stares into the distance, idly twirling a stylus of some kind through her fingers in a display of dexterity and control that is impressive in a casual way. Eventually, she says,

“The day before... you were not surprised at my species. Why was that?”

You shrug. “Stories about bogeythings from the dark depths of the galaxy have been floating around since Alternia went interstellar. I've seen a lot of things that were only wild stories, dark whispers in cantinas. Why shouldn't a wrigger-tale be real, given enough evidence.”

“Yes. Evidence. I match the stories then?”

“Let's see, hella frail, huge-ass pale eyes, enough psychic power to brainwash a fief... yeah, you match.”

“But none of those things are hard evidence,” she presses, suddenly spearing you with a stare. “What made you believe my claim?”

It's a moment before you can sort out your feelings. “Peixes... Fef's given to random acts from time to time. But this... this was planned. And there are very few trolls that can be as serious about planning as Feferi Peixes, but only under some specific conditions: she has to believe and she has to worry.”

You meet that violet gaze. “Feferi Peixes beat a troll three thousand sweeps older than her in single combat with almost no damage taken. Anything that worries her, scares the shit out of me.”

Lalonde leans back, nodding. “The credence of fear. A valid, primal reason. Your story, while not directly analogous, is sufficiently similar to mine that it will serve as a useful bridge.”

She turns from you and with a twirl of that stylus, changes the bright vista, plunges it into darkness. Your stomach turns, but you get it under control. You are floating in nothing, held up by nothing and the focus of your world is the Seer. She waves the stylus and slowly a view of the galaxy coheres, spinning languidly. Untold trillions of stars blink and glimmer in the utter darkness of your space, enveloping the totality of your vision. You have to crane your neck to see even the nearest border of the spiral. Your breath catches; never before have you see such detail in the depiction of the galaxy.

Another wave, and a solid third of the infinitismally tiny stars bleed tyrian in a shock of colour.

“These are the borders of the Alternian Empire as it stands.” Another wave and that mass of stars turns from tyrian to gold and spreads to make up three-quarters of the map.

“These are the borders of the ancient civilization that left those black boxes. According to all of our tales, any scant records we have left, humans were a significant part of it. Have you ever heard of an empire stretching this span?”

Mutely, you have to shake your head.

“That is because it died more than eighty thousand years ago, exterminated by this threat. What ruins remained were overwritten by succeeding civilizations until almost all traces of it were destroyed, until now.”

She turns back to you as the gold vanishes and the map zooms, zooms, zooms deeper and deeper, scaling down to the cluster, to the system level, until a single, octohedral ship takes up your floating existence in wireframe. Two blinking souls indicate its occupants, in violet and blue and you suddenly feel very, very small.

“I am one of maybe, _maybe_ eight remaining humans in the entirety of this galaxy. Something reduced us, that galaxy spanning civilization, to this.”

Cold. You only notice it now, but the warmth in the room has drained. You are shivering, both at what you are being presented with and at the temperature. Probably another theatrical trick of the Seer, but it gives her point some extra kick. The creeping sense of fear that she has been trying to communicate to you starts to prickle at your extremities, mingling with the chill.

“I have not spoken to my kin in almost a lifetime, Vriska Serket. But we are agreed on one thing. Something is coming for us, for this galaxy. It hungers for us, it hates us, and by all rights, it should be able to finish us, _because we few are all that are left from thousands_.”

You wonder for a moment what it would be like to be the only survivors of a civilization, that was at some point a proud ruler of the galaxy. There's a moment of what might be pity, but all that your mind has room for at this moment, is the overwhelming presence of Rose Lalonde. It is like she is looming over you, dwarfing your impressive frame and it takes a jolt of reality to realize that she _is_ that she is physically in your space, hands rested on either side of you on armrests that aren't there. And even though she is much smaller, much slighter than you, you shrink from her, into your non-existant seat.

“If you believe Feferi on the credence of fear, then you must believe me. But I ask you, Vriska Serket, to put aside that fear and work for me, with me, to secure this galaxy from another end.”

You swallow. It is a hard thing, getting anything down a throat that dry, that closed. Harder still it is to summon your courage and tell her,

“No.”

Lalonde starts, shattering her production of inspiring, omniscient leader and for a brief second exposing something uncertain, something too young underneath that porcelain skin, that ageless edifice. Before she can turn that surprise into something like anger, or disappointment, you force more words out.

“I don't put aside my fear. I face it, I fucking crush that shit. Hell yeah I'll work for you. Gimme your fears, Lalonde, I'll eat them too. You think we're scared now? Wait 'til these Lords of what the fuck ever run up against me. We'll see who's fucking afraid then.”

And something shifts in her face, something that you can't put your finger on. Something between happiness and relief, something like the anticipation of joy. You can almost feel her animosity retract from you and replacing it is something like grudging admiration. Her arrogant fucking facade returns and she straightens with a nod.

“Well then. It appears we have work to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the Journals of Rose Lalonde:
> 
>  
> 
> She does not know what she did. Still, after all these years, she does not know. How long had I been singular, alone, diminishing in the dark before Feferi sent me her. How long had it been since I had seen even a glimmer of light, and even then a method of grasping that slender strand of possibility. I could count the years, only to debase the effort they represented.
> 
>  
> 
> Suffice to say, she gave me hope.


	4. Operations: Various, N/A

From there, it's pretty much a done deal, though Lalonde makes a show of testing you more.

* * *

_Now connect the blue wire to the third red slot-_

“Wait, third? You said second before.”

_That was on the external systems. The internals are configured slightly differently to trip up careless blue-bloods who ask stupid questions when they are on time sensitive missions an-_

“Yeah yeah, I get it,” you grumble, not without a grin, following her instructions. The rest of the security system is bypassed without incident and you slip into the inner confines of the jeweller's hive.

The floor is apparently pressure-plated and Lalonde wanted you to disable that system next, but you pointed out in the mission briefing that there was no point with a room this cluttered. From the doorway you spring forward and come up in a roll on a couch. Then you step to a side table, the arm of an armchair and then come up short. There _was_ supposed to be a display table there.

_I suppose it makes sense to move the table when it is not in use..._

That's about as much of an apology as you're going to get from her. You consider the distance between the armchair and low door. Nope, you're not making that. Casting around, you catch sight of some decorations and grin.

_Oh, you cannot be serious._

Retreating to the couch, you use its extra space to limber up, do some stretches. Its been years since you've had to use the particular skills that the obstacle courses at the academy taught you and Pyrope had always been better at them anyways. Hell, she'd been better at everything. But you, you were lucky, and lucky was better than good because it keeps you from being dead.

When you're good and warmed up, you move back on the couch to give yourself room for a run up and then bolt forwards. You clear the space straight to the armchair, land curled up and then throw yourself at the chandelier. Grabbing it is easy, getting the angle right is hard. You swing around once, twice, three times in an oblate circle, and then let go, letting the momentum hurl you through the door to the jeweller's office. You're somersaulting in a backspin and you can nearly feel the top part of the door kiss your chin before you're through. Still mid air, you splay yourself wide and land solidly, barely on the two guest chairs. In splits.

_I did not take you for an acrobat, Serket._

You really wish she'd shut up right now, because as easy as you make this look, it isn't. You wince slightly at the strain and even more when you consider your dismount. With a flex of muscles you haven't used in years, you propel yourself out of the splits and onto the desk in a crouch. You are going to feel that in the morning.

_That's what she said._

“Now? Really, now?” you hiss. Then you're gingerly clambering over to the desk chair and removing the painting to reveal the safe. One digital cracker later, the thing hisses open and you frown.

_Dammit._

It's a rectangular black box alright. But it is not made out of stone or metal or what have you. It is plain old cardboard. Out of curiosity, you remove it anyways. Kind of a weighty thing.

_The mission is over, Serket. The intel was a dud. Extract._

You ignore her and slide the cover up to check out the contents. And nearly drop the thing in shock.

_Oh my lord. No. I forbid it._

“Get fucked Lalonde,” you mutter in childish glee. You are taking this with you. You don't have one of her black boxes but you are walking out of here with a massive gilt and gem-encrusted tramplebeast cock.

_Goddammit, Vriska._

* * *

“And that's when, haaa, and that's when Pyrope tells the dumb little shit,

'Coin? The Prosecution sees no coin. _She's blind, remember?_ '”

The punchline has almost an entire bar of legislacerators in howling stitches as you recount one of the few missions you and Terezi had ever been on.

“And then she pitches him through the window, _with the noose he tied on still around his neck!_ ”

More laughter and you're scanning the crowd for any signs. Not all of your missions are about finding the damn boxes. Some are about ensuring the stability of the Empire. Like rooting out a den of Old Guard sympathizers in the newly reformed judicature. Apparently while a lot of legislacerators miss the old days, they are quite pleased with the return to rule of law. But they're more than happy to reminisce about the good times.

“Oh man. We could not get away with that shit anymore.”

“Yeah, but would you really want to? That crap went on because there were so many bloody high-bloods and crap that we couldn't bring in. Now they're all fair game, _finally_.” The shark grins around the bar are familiar in a way that brings a twinge to your bloodpusher.

“At the cost of not being able to do that to any low-blood to keep quotas up.”

“No more quotas, dumbass.”

“Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts before crime rates start to skyrocket.”

“No way, Peixes is too hardline idealistic to go back on her word, at least this soon.”

“What is soon to her anyways? Like, five hundred sweeps?”

“Hey, Serket,” you let your attention wander back to the lime-blood who mentioned you. Your reputation was enough to let you stumble in here apparently comepletely wasted without getting curbed, but it paid to be careful.

“Yeah?”

“What do you think? Will Feferi Peixes go back on her reforms whe- ok, _if_ they don't work out.”

You take a long pull of the bottle in front of you and make like you're considering the question. You are, just not for the answer. After a second, you say slowly, carefully, like you're trying to keep your focus,

“I think... that whoever managed to stick the head of the last fish-bitch on her own trident will get what she wants, one way or another.”

And there it is. The flicker across a face in the middle of the crowd at “fish-bitch.” There's your lead.

Weeks later, his execution is one of the last public ones in the Empire. All hail the great reformer.

* * *

In between missions, you don't have much to do. You have run of an entire “arm” of the thing, but most of the rooms are empty. One becomes your respiteblock and another is a decent viewing gallery if you can get Lalonde to roll the ship at an interesting spot of space. The rest you're vaguely considering turning into a shooting gallery if you can convince the Seer to pull down the walls. You learn to pull shows and crap off the local holonets while you're off the ship because Lalonde refuses any sort of connection that could compromise security. The ship also runs ridiculously low on energy, with most of the other arms devoid of atmosphere and power.

So sometimes you pester her. Just to get back at her for the imposed boredom, of course. Not for any need for sentient company.

When she's doing digital research, its easy enough to lounge on a beach-chair in her ridiculous office and shoot the shit. She spends almost the entire time talking down to you, but you never asked for a friend, you just wanted someone to crack wise at. After verifying that the sand doesn't actually exist, you bring your gear there for maintenance as you slowly accumulate something of an armoury.

When she's doing her psychic thing, she's boring as hell. No responses, nothing. She just sits or floats there, glowing darkly as her mind goes lightyears away. Sometimes the force of the psychic bleed is such that you nearly get sick, so you stop hanging around there when she's _thinking_.

It's when you're stripping a blaster cannon that she mentions,

“This ship _is_ equipped with an armoury. If you want for proper facilities to maintain your equipment.”

“What, am I fuckin' disturbing you, Lalonde?” you say, swigging something foul from your flask. You picked it up from the last planet you raided. Good food, terrible booze. Mission was a bust.

“No, actually. I prefer it when I see you walk in here with various pieces of primitive machinery. I suffer less chatter then.”

“Shit, Lalonde, you pretty well guaranteed I'm never gonna bring this shit in here now.”

“How terrible, a backfire in my nefarious plan. I suppose I shall have to go back to the drawing board for a new method of achieving your departure from my premises.”

“I _live_ in your premises.”

“An oversight I regret daily.”

Still, that'll be at least a new area of the ship to look at. Might be good for three days entertainment, a week if you stretch it. You slap a power coil into its housing and are considering if you want to go there tomorrow or right now when the Seer mentions,

“Aradia appears to have deregistered you as her kismesis.”

You don't even freeze. That would let Lalonde know she's gotten to you. You finished reassembling the outer casing and say offhand,

“Well yeah, she's probably got enough slurry to hold off the drones until she's no longer mandatory.”

The Seer stops whatever she is doing at the terminal as light and rain trickle from the sky, spattering the world in a perverse rainbow. You are suddenly incredibly uncomfortable here.

“Vriska, drone season has not existed for a sweep.”

You decide that you're going to check that armoury out right now, impressions be damned. You shoulder the cannon and call over your shoulder,

“Yo, I'm checking out that armoury. Pressure it up for me or whatever.” And then you leave.

You're not six paces out the door before it slides open again and you scowl where she can't see it.

“Don't recall asking you to come.”

“And I do not recall telling you where the armoury was located.”

You shut up as Rose Lalonde draws abreast of you. She barely comes up to your chest, but takes a slight lead thanks to a quicker stride. Her arms swing purposefully from side to side as she continues ahead. _So weird_ , you think, looking at her almost swaying gait. You have no idea how her species managed to get upright.

“I will have to authorize you, for obvious reasons,” she says, interrupting your train of thought. You tear it away from her, from everything and focus it on the idea of getting to play around with your own armoury. You'll have to stock it yourself, of course, but that's something to look forward to. Maybe you can stretch this out further than a week. You're not one for organizing shit, but you think you can make an exception for a wall of guns, swords and explosives.

You and the human (you are _still_ trying to get your head around that) pause at the bulkhead leading to another arm, two clockwise from yours. After a moment, the dull red lighting surrounding the door washes out to the harsh white light that you're used to. It hisses open and a rush of cold air hits you. A bare shiver, and you and the Seer step in.

She stops at the first door and waits for something you assume to be a scan. After a moment,

“Scan organism entering behind me. Create new authorization file: Serket, Vriska. Set armoury permissions entry, use, alterations to true.”

And then you're in a bland grey space. A flat table takes up one short wall, while another has the strange etchings that pass as decorations on this tub. And head of you is the long, laned space that you associate with shooting ranges. You give a nod of approval.

“Tools?”

The Seer gestures at the table and when you approach, you can see faint traceries on the surface and sides. You hold a hand over one and it opens, revealing a blank space. You look at Lalonde questioningly.

“Think of the tool you need.”

You raise an eyebrow, but call to mind a simple fine brush for cleaning out gunk from parts. There's a hiss and a brush slots itself into the small cavity. Picking it up, you run the thing against your face.

“Not bad,” you remark to the open air, “A bit stiffer next time.”

“I am so pleased you find this space agreeable. Perhaps in the future I might visit to see what you've made of it. The far future. The far, far-”

But you've already tuned her out, determined to test the shooting range. A blaster cannon is designed to take out extra-heavy infantry and armoured vehicles, so using it in a shooting range is overkill, to say the least. But if this place anticipates needs...

As the hulking drone shape coheres on the other side of the range, you sling the cannon into firing position and loose a screeching bolt of energy that tears through the intervening space, ripping into the construct.

“Drone damage sustained: 83%. Kill probability: 70% Disabled probability: 100%.” The echoing robotic voice makes you start and Lalonde frown. It sounds a lot like her, but less stuffy, more casual and a bit higher.

“Disable voice overlay.”

“Belay that order,” you return immediately. Her frown turns into a scowl in your direction. “Got a problem with the voice, Lalonde?”

She regards you a moment with a look that turns your blood to ice. You get the feeling that you've stepped over a boundary here. Well. Don't know where they are until you push. You hold up your hands,

“Hey, its not like you're going to be here. I wouldn't mind hearing SOME kind of different voice during the long darks.”

A flicker of something across her face and she relents. She's about to leave when she turns back to face you, that frown back. Then she moves to the etched wall and murmurs something, beyond your hearing. A small portion of the wall spins and she takes something from the proffered space.

“Here,” she says, handing you an immensely heavy pistol. “Think of it as a graduation present. You surpassed my expectations some time ago. I have little to give but these artifacts of my people and this seems to suit you the best.”

It's an ugly thing, dull grey, chased in red. The grip is rough, which you don't necessarily disapprove of, and the barrel is huge, heavy, encased in a thick shell of a material you're not familiar with. That you don't like, since it makes drawing an accurate bead that much more difficult.

Lalonde speak a word that _sounds_ Alternian but isn't and that makes you look at her.

“Through several translations, its name would be Butcher.”

Butcher. It suits the thing. You shift to the firing range, and finding the safety and flicking it off, you see the frame of a large, armoured troll come into being.

“What's it fire? Laser? No, something this size, some kind of plasma, or a high-yield gyrojet rocket? Come on, give a lady a hint.”

“I am afraid my knowledge of the specific terminology is lacking. It is referred to as a bullet in literature, however.”

“A kinetic shot? Are you fucking serious? And you call my species primitive, holy hell. I might as well throw rocks at my enemies.”

A squeeze and the feeling, the noise of the sound barrier being shattered rocks the room. You shake your head from the daze and find the Seer with both hands covering her auriculars.

“Holy shit,” you say and cannot even hear yourself. “What the hell was that.”

_That, dear troll, was a shard of super-dense carbon electromagnetically accelerated to super-sonic speeds and fired out the barrel of that gun._

You stare at the weapon in your hands and back to the human. Far too loudly, you say,

“Are you telling me,” you yell, slowly, “that this is a hand-held _railgun?_ ”

 _Not quite,_ the Seer begins, with a small, evil smile curling her lips. _Let me tell you something, my dear agent. When humanity first fought itself, we used rocks. Then we invented bows and arrows, to let us affix rocks to shafts to shoot rocks further. Then we built castles and hurled rocks at them to bring them crashing down. We mastered flight, and after a while our most efficient method of destroying our enemies was rocks, dropped at supersonic speed from soaring jets. We went into space and fired super-accelerated rocks at our first alien species. And when our doom came for us, our single most effective weapon was asteroids, hurled through space. Thrown. Rocks._

_You see, Vriska Serket, we dallied with other means of causing harm, but what became absolutely, irrefutably clear to us was one truth: There is nothing, NOTHING like sheer, kinetic force for destroying your enemy._

“Cavalreaper damage sustained: 89%. Kill probability: 100% Disabled probability: Not available.”

Holy shit.

* * *

It feels like forever before you're given a chance to use it.

* * *

This is so cool.

You are hanging in mid air, suspended weightless by a series of anti-grav generators at strategic points of your body as you coast your way through the laser-wire protecting the vault. The room is criss-crossed with more of them than you can count, turning the whole thing into a red and black checkerboard pattern of death. Of course, they wouldn't kill you, but they would trigger an alarm releasing the drones that would inevitably kill you.

“Lalonde, if I ever complain again about our arrangement, remind me that you gave me the chance to straight up superspy my way into a bank vault in pleather and on anti-grav.”

_You look like a cadaver wrapped in latex._

“Shut up, you know I look sexy.”

_There is not a curve on your body that would render that get-up attractive._

“Please, your jealousy is crowding the airwaves. Just look at these legs in these pants,” you say, slowly extending a limb through the weave of lasers to make a point. You can almost hear her suck in a breath at the near graze of a laser. Your face hurts for the grin on it.

_A plastic skeleton. Perhaps if we poured Ms. Megido into that suit it would be more appealing._

“Ha!” you bark a laugh as you rotating yourself through a particularly tricky mesh. “She'd be spilling out at every seam. Couldn't get the zipper up properly!”

 _Indeed._ Along with the word comes a vision of a violet-painted lip, bit in anticipation. You scowl and nearly float into a beam before abruptly halting your progress. _Apologies, am I distracting you?_

“Shut up.”

You make it to the vault and key in the thirty-six digit combination and tape the vault keeper's falsified genetic sample to the scanner. The lasers cut out and you step onto solid ground, consigning yourself to gravity once more. You dart into the vault, scanning the boxes for the right number. You hit four thirteen and come to a squeaking halt. The dead man's key opens it without issue and inside is paydirt.

_Thank what gods remain._

For the second time you handle the strange material of the black boxes and withdraw the device from the safety deposit box. You shut it silently and fairly scamper back to the vault door, full seconds before it is due to shut. A tearing motion strips the tape from the reader and you wipe it down with disinfectant. You pause, waiting for the Seer to wipe the record of access from the records before giving you the go ahead.

And then you leap into the maze again holding the box out in front of you to navigate. Your arms area shaking by the time you exit, and they are the only lasting evidence of the greatest heist in Alternian history.

* * *

The ship rotates in space above Alternia as you and the Seer stand apprehensively above the ancient device. You steal a glance at her face. A slight crease mars an ivory facade and you cut your gaze back down to the box. With something like the weight of ritual, she touches it _just so_ and the whole thing lights up.

All sound stills in the holoroom. Not even the ocean makes a sound and in the distance, the rain ceases. Clouds of iridescent fluff clear. The lights on the box deepen, then swell and finally a great, sparking visual noise erupts from the center.

And fails to resolve.

Lalonde waits for a moment longer and then slumps back in her chair, disappointment evident on her face. This was the first box you'd managed to extract without anyone knowing. The troll owner had been dead for a century already, no one was going to come looking. Lalonde, Rose, had been looking forward to this with more investment than you've ever seen from her reserved frame. And now this. She doesn't let you see her disappointment, but it is palpable all the same. You're not as indifferent as you give people reason to think.

You straighten, unsure of what to say. So you leave, moving for the door, but not before catching a glimpse of Rose leaning forward and calling up a holo GUI all around the device.

You smile, and you’re not entirely unfamiliar with the glow of pride, assurance growing in your chest.

* * *

“This? This is what I risked my life for?”

You are a charred, smoking mess. Your hair is a ruin, and the whole airlock smells like burning skin and hair filaments. The last moments of the mission, you leaping through empty air to be swooped up by the unmanned shuttle play through your mind. The laser cannon, breaching the shuttle's shield at the last moment to vaporize you. The laser cannon, its power leeched by the ancient and arcane shields of human technology only serving you up _rare_ rather than _well-done_.

And now Lalonde's smirking, amused face.

This wasn't some ancient key to saving the galaxy. This didn't ensure the stability and survival of the Alternian Empire. Your hatred waxes black and you divest yourself of you pack and pop every joint from your lower back forward. The Seer takes all this in with that amused, mocking gaze. You are going to wipe the fucking decks with that denigrating look, making light of your hard work...

“Indeed. And if you would care to clean up a touch, I would like to invite you to my viewing gallery to share it.”

You come up short, about to haul back for a haymaker designed to inflict the most pain and the least physical harm on a body. Your body relaxes as your brain processes the information. It's no key to saving the galaxy, no token of survival. But Lalonde is offering to share with you a bottle of some fucking old-ass alcohol and everyone knows the older that shit is, the better it gets.

You shrug and make for your respiteblock.

* * *

The damn ablutionblock suggests various haircuts to deal with the torching of your glorious, unkempt mane while you were showering and finally you snap and pick something with a stupid undercut that shaves off fully half your hair in a style you are sure is going to piss Lalonde off further. Then you cut the voice from the damn ablutionblock because that shit’s creepy.

You follow the guiding lights to what you presume is Lalonde's arm of the ship, where you come up short at the sealed bulkhead. You look around for some kind of hailer. Like hell you’re going to knock. Finding the speakers, you press the hail button and before you even say anything, the doors slide open silently. Yours screech open in what you assume is a bit of territorial dominance, but you aren't sure you would trade.

The lights continue to guide you to a door about halfway down the arm, which slides open to a reveal a dark space. Pale blue lights delimit the viewing space, a window into the endless dark of space. The void rotates spins slightly and you become aware of the rotation of the ship as you pass through the door. A figure in the corner stands. It is dark, with dark hair and wears a gown made of viridian starlight. It is clearly not Lalonde, built stronger, hardier and with fuller curves and eyes that glow a dull green.

Then it is gone, and the Seer's pale face stares at you from the darkness. A shake of her head, a passing of her hand and she pretends she hasn't shed tears.

“So. You are now a singular creature, Vriska Serket. The only troll to have seen two humans.”

“Who-”

“Please. No questions. You and she are safer for their lack.”

You are about to push the point when she reaches into an alcove and withdraws the bottle. Rose Lalonde, casual in a striped dress with a simple symbol emblazoned upon it, stands and traces her way to a seat before the grand viewing window. With a reel of vertigo, you realize how large the window is, finally. Rose is tiny, tinier than even you hold her in your thoughts before it. You are certain the arms are not so large to accommodate the sheer size window and you have to wonder how the view is being accomplished.

Another seat twists its way up from the ground beside her, along with a side table.

“The great spymasters of yore would take issue with my sharing of my private moments with you.”

“Yeah, because that got them so far.”

You cover the distance, glad you went with nothing more formal than an approximation of your dress whites, rendered in plain blue and black. You undo the jacket so that when you slouch into your chair, your undershirt covers more than the jacket. A leg goes over an armrest and you drawl,

“Sooo... about that alcohol?”

The Seer carefully pops the cork of the bottle and waves into the darkness. Two glasses float out at speed and float to a halt before her. Carefully, almost unfamiliarly, she pours measures of the rich, ruby liquid.

“For the lady Serket,” she murmurs, and floats a glass over.

“Awesome. What are we drinking?”

“This is a vintage from the garden world of Oasis. Late vine red wine. It should be dry on the palate with a satisfying, sweet finish.”

“Wine? Seriously? We're drinking grape juice?”

“Oh, when will you learn not to underestimate me, Serket?”

“Whenever you get off your bloody high horse, Lalonde.” You take a huge gulp of the wine and immediately break down into a fit of coughing.

“Sorry, I forgot to mention that taste profile was from two hundred sweeps ago. I imagine it’s rather harsher and more... full-bodied now.”

Between your coughing fits you manage to flip her various obscene gestures, until you recover. You learn to take small, gentle sips the whole time. She tells you about the world of Oasis, something out in lawless space, where a small community of various species once grew the grapes and made this wine. Before the Alternian Empire came and the war for the planet destroyed its most valuable commodity.

You tell a story very similar, of hitting an Old Guard distillery world a few years ago. The fighting had been fierce and every shot and explosion that damaged the goods pained your unit. Turned out the whole reason for the raid was that the shit was reducing the lifespan of mid-bloods. Rose comments that maybe you don’t know what “very similar” implies.

Presently, the snark dies down, and the pair of you are left staring out the viewing window into the dark, lounging in something that approaches companionable silence. Ages, moments pass and suddenly you gasp. A corner of the window is slowly engulfed in a coruscating stardust as the ship passes into view of a magnificent nebula that slowly eats up your world view.

Rose pours you a third, maybe fourth glass and you sip at it, and watch the galaxy pass.

* * *

You are woken by a cacophony of psychic screaming into a reality of Rose Lalonde shrieking.


	5. Operation: Firewater

When you finally get the hatch to her chambers out of its housing, she's shrieking some alien word over and over again. You still aren't sure if it was purely psychic screaming you heard or verbal as well, but right now you are getting an earful of it so it's a moot point. The Seer is half-off of some flat piece of furniture holding her head, eyes completely rolled back up into her head.

“Lalonde, what the fuck?” you say, not entirely willing to close with a powerful psychic in the middle of what could be a fit. She doesn't seem to hear you or is ignoring you. Again you try. And again. Until finally you're out of patience and you march up to her and slap her hard enough to sting.

“ROSE LALONDE.”

That shuts her up, and she blinks strange, colourless tears out of her eyes as a hand comes up to her cheek. Then focuses on you and her eyes narrow.

“Alright, back with us? Good. I'm not gonna say I was worried, but you could have woken the whole ship if there was anyone other than me here. The hell was that about?”

“They,” she bites out, like every word is a dagger thrust up through her throat and over her tongue, “have killed my brother.”

You're silent a moment as you try to figure out what to make of this information. Hesitantly, you go with, “Sorry? I mean, I'm not sure what a brother is, but I'm guessing it's important?”

She's glaring at you again and sure, maybe that wasn't the most sensitive thing to say, but who did you look like, Feferi fucking Peixes?

“Genetically identical hatchmate of a different gender, normally born of the same mammalian host. We were slightly different, but we were still, we were _still_ -”

Lalonde shudders and takes deep breath, like its her last, like she is fighting to keep from drowning as the loss and emotion start to overtake her. You know what that's like, you think. Distantly. Then she breathes out and with the discipline of the really good psychics, her entire demeanour changes. From frail, grief-wracked xenos to calm, collected, _deadly_ Seer.

“Prep for planetfall. We're going to get him.”

You nod and leave her quarters.

* * *

“Hang on, what's with the get up?”

Lalonde is in what is clearly slender armour made for her species. It reminds you vaguely of chitin, but this stuff is curved and rounded where chitin would jaggedly cut off. Some kind of thickly corded fibres underlay deep violet armour in black. The armour is noticeable thicker in strategic places, the upper torso and across the front of limbs in particular, and you wonder what kind of threats gave rise to the design. Rather than being stored in a captchalogue, a small weapon appears to actually be _holstered_ at her side.

“I am coming with you, obviously.”

“Uh, is that such a good idea? I mean, I assume you use me because you don't want to risk yourself and this could still be a hot-zone. Are you su-urk!”

It's like a massive hand has grabbed you and slammed you against the shuttle. The way Lalonde is holding her grip in a crushing gesture, you get the impression that that is exactly what she's envisioning now. Psychic over-bleed tumbles from her aura, blue and golden droplets that spark and disappear into the air. You've never seen her physically manifest any power before and it is almost awe-inspiring.

“Let us be clear here, Serket. I am well aware of the risks to myself and the operation, but I am, as you can see, eminently capable of taking care of myself. Now, I am going to retrieve my brother, give him something approaching a proper funerary rite and you are not going to protest further and are in fact going to support me and defend me from any and all threats while we are down there. Are we clear?”

You manage a nod. Not like you're her fucking moirail or anything, not like you care. She manages to not toss you aside, though you're sure she's itching to. You fall from the shuttle's side and massage your throat. After a moment, you follow her inside.

* * *

The battlefield is incredibly bizarre. The planet is a dustbowl, with sand and stone as far as you can see so the traces of war are already starting to fade, but they're still there. Signs of explosions, glassy holes in dunes larger than your shuttle, smoking ruins of rock formations. The air smells of ozone and discharged plasma.

“What the hell happened here?”

“They came in force for him.”

“Who did? Wait, all this for _one guy_?” You look back at the glass tunnel bored through a dune and try to imagine the weapon that could have done it.

“Yes. He was a warrior like you've never seen before. He should have been my right hand, but he had other ideas. By himself, he was more than enough for any unit. But they were prepared.” You notice her voice is distant, like she's somewhere else. Probably going back over the vision. “Specially modified units. Lighter, faster. Not fast enough to catch him, not by mile, but fast enough to keep up, maybe once in a hundred thousand times.”

You shift uncomfortably, unsure if she's referring to the shots fired or the numbers deployed against this guy.

“No armour, because it wouldn't have mattered against his blade.”

“A blade? I didn't think anyone but us trolls still saw the use of swords and shit on the battlefield anymore.”

You hear the smile behind her helmet, in her voice. “We made fun of him for it. Why not use a proper weapon? Because it would have made it too easy. Required too little skill. He was always trying to measure up to our elders. He never even noticed when he surpassed them.”

She looks across the ruin of planet. “I hope you took more than they were willing to lose, Dave.”

A shudder, quickly suppressed and she's back in the now, back in control. “They have left and ensured that no trace of them will be found. We are relatively secure, I sense no psychic traces.”

She heads up a dune and you follow. The armour adds weight, so her steps are unusually plodding as she sinks shin deep into the stuff. You make no comment as you ghost up behind her. The atmosphere is unbreathable, but there is one, so you make do without armour. It would slow you down, as it evidently does her. You crest the dune and stare out into the wasteland as she catches up.

“There,” you point into the distance. “Dot of red, not terrain, probably not vegetation.”

“His armour was red,” she confirms, quietly.

When you get there, to the corpse, it's not what you expect. The armour is slightly blackened, of a type with Lalonde's, but blockier and thicker still. Frontline stuff, you assume, while Lalonde's could be for more of a support role. A full helmet completes the ensemble, with a strangely-shaped darkened visor. The signs of battle are scarce, except for a seared circular hole through the sternum. _That's it? He died from that?_

“A single lucky shot. Through the heart and the back-up and through the armoured spinal column. No armour on them, no shields. All power to weapons.” She barks a laugh. “What you can do with disposable troops.”

She kneels at his side and goes over his body before focusing on something in the sand. “That's... not right.”

She's looking at something partially covered by sand and with a wave of her hand, she clears it. You frown. It's the blade of a sword, but made of nothing you've seen before. You'd call it glass, except it looks less fragile and somehow less tangible simultaneously. You bend to pick it up.

“Stop,” she says and you freeze. “It's coherent light. Handle it wrong and it could slice right through your hand.”

“That's _light_?!” You ask, incredulous. “What, like a laser? That's a fragment of a laser? How the hell does that work?”

“Not like a laser at all and I have no idea. Without a power source, Caledfwlch shouldn't-” her head comes up in a snap. “There's someone still here.”

She's off like a shot, and you sprint to catch up with her. The Seer is bee-lining for a rock formation, arms pumping, leaned fully forward into her chase, powering through the sand. Then the pair of you hit solid rock and she overtakes you suddenly and you become aware of the armour whirring and whining, adding to her speed.

“Hell, slow down Lalonde!” you yell after her and pick up the pace. She rips around a corner and before she disappears, you see her draw the firearm, catch a glimpse of it unfold into something larger and then she's gone. “Hells.”

You turn the corner, worry rising with each shot not fired and then come up short. Lalonde has stopped, panting, weapon pointed at a small figure in the corner of a small cave. It cowers, covering something with its body and it takes you a second to recognize the species through the rags.

“A carapace? Out here?” You ask and when Lalonde makes no answer, you roll your eyes and reach out to move her aim away from the terrified thing. “It's no threat, human. Look at it, it's completely terrified of us.”

“It has Caledfwlch.”

“Yeah, I can't pronounce that bullshit. It has what?”

“Dave's sword.”

“Oh.” You look again, and sure, maybe that's the hilt of a sword under it. You'll go with Lalonde's sight on this one. “Still no reason to be so friggin' paranoid. Reach out, its mind is almost completely gone.”

Slowly the Seer lowers her weapon and you can feel the infinitely more precise filaments of her mind reach out. “You appear to be correct.”

She starts forward, lowering herself, approaching the carapace as if approaching a wounded animal. Carefully she inches forwards, stopping when the alien's trembling gets worse. Eventually, she halts and begins chittering in a low tone. Huh. You can't count the number of people who have bothered to learn Carapacian.

It doesn't respond, at least not at first. After some minutes of Lalonde trying to get a response from it, it finally manages a nod. Tension that you weren't aware she'd been bottling up flows from her. She says a few more things that you think are questions, but when she reaches for the sword, it flinches away, clutching the thing to itself more closely.

It looks like its back to the drawing board and speaking of, that's what you're getting. You'd been looking forward to a fight against some kind of horrific thing from outside time and space, and here you are negotiating with a friggin' carapace for a dead guy's sword. Incredible.

Then all the tension is back in the Seer's crouched form and you're suddenly alert again. There's a subtle difference to it suddenly and you noticed the carapace has drawn something. It means nothing to you, but the jagged, interlocking lines obviously have her attention.

_Serket. There is another carapace somewhere nearby. It has a device that must be recovered at all costs, or barring that, destroyed. Be careful, I believe it is armed._

Heh. An armed carapace. This ought to be good. Hilarious, even. You fairly well skip off in search of the thing.

* * *

The howl of a blaster cannon fills the air and you hurl yourself through the air again, swearing profusely. This is about as far from hilarious as you can imagine. Not only is the damn carapace _well_ -armed, it is actually competent with the weaponry it has. The little bugger opened the engagement with a fucking _plasma mortar_ and when you closed to within its range, it switched to the damn blaster cannon it's using now.

Finally managing to get behind a rock outcropping that can withstand a few blasts, you catch your breath. Your cover shakes with the impact of a blast, and you draw your pistol. You are strongly considering bringing a rifle of some kind the next time you go out on one of these. Another blast hits and you peek out of cover to draw a bead on your assailant. A tiny, ragged head ducks behind cover just as you sight and fire.

Dammit, the bastard has high ground as well. You quest out fumblingly with your power and run into a blockade of single-minded opposition. There's no skill to it, no psychic power, just sheer, bloody-minded determination. It's like its entire mind is wholly-given over to its mission of _protecting the thing_. So helpful, thanks, psychotically capable carapace dude.

Speaking of whom, the bastard pops up from a different outcropping and with practice that comes with years on the battlefield, you calculate that he's got a clear shot at you from that angle. You're about to duck around to the other side of your cover before the world slows down and you see him level his weapon. It's not the blaster cannon, it's an old missile launcher. In a flash you get what he's going for. You could take cover, but then he just fires into the ground _next to_ your cover and the explosion would get you, or shockwave would at least disable you. So you do the only sensible thing.

You charge.

Beady little eyes grow large as he sees your suicidal rush, and he hesitates, thinking too much. Your pistol comes up and you blaze away at his cover on full-auto. He ducks, and you know you have this engagement. Summoning all the strength in your blue-blooded musculature, you bound from the ground up to his little platform in a single leap and snap your aim down to his prone form. In time to stare down the barrel of a blaster rifle. Goddammit, how many weapons does this guy _have?!_

“Surrender,” you say, for lack of anything better to do in the standoff.

“You first,” it replies, in a disturbingly deep voice for a carapace. Which means a fairly normal pitch for trolls.

“No way, I successfully assaulted your entrenched position. I am not surrendering when you've got your back against the wall. Er, floor.”

“I didn't have enough time to set up, otherwise I'd have ruined your day, troll.”

You glance in the direction he nods, and take in a stack of mines, several automated sentry guns, defensive field generators.

“Holy shit, how do you carry all that crap?”

“High-capacity captchalogue.” That makes sense. “It malfunctioned.”

That makes more sense. “Look, my boss is trying to talk your buddy out of his little shock nap or whatever-”

“You will leave the Mayor alone!”

“The what? Look, all we want is the sword and the damn thing you're protecting. This is a lose-lose situation for you. I nearly got you and my boss is so damn psychically powerful she scares _me_ so you don't want her after you. And let me tell you, she is _pissed_ right now, so you just give up the thing and you can go back to scavenging-”

“We aren't scavenging! The Knight gave me this keepsake to guard with my life, and I intend to do so!”

“The Knight? What? You're saying this Dave person... Oh for... This is getting stupidly over-complicated. Look, my boss is this Knight's brother-”

“What the hell is a brother?”

“Some kind of extra-special hatchmate, I don't know, do I look human to you? Point is, they're related and she wants that thing you're guarding because I get the feeling it is hella dangerous.”

“Nonsense! It is just an old portable computer.”

“Correct, insofar as the bare minimum description can be.”

You very nearly fall off the platform in surprise as Lalonde appears, the other carapace following, still clutching the sword.

“Mayor! Are you alright? She didn't hurt you, did you?”

The smaller carapace shakes its head and the gun-toting one almost relaxes. “Well? Are you a relation of the Knight?”

“I am. My name is Rose Lalonde, sister to the Knight of Time, Dave Strider.”

“Prove it.”

That was the wrong thing to say, because Lalonde has evidently had enough. You fairly well wince as her psychics manifest again. But there's no invisible fist this time, no crushing pressure. Instead, there is _noise_.

It is like the relentless pounding of a the sea back at your hive, slamming you against the cliffs again and again. You are reminded of her office, the strangely alien and fantastical seascape turned to storm and shadow. Her psychics flash like blue and golden lightning about her and her voice is dark thunder in your mind.

_I AM THE SEER OF LIGHT, ONE OF NOW SIX HUMANS LEFT IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. MY BROTHER IS DEAD BY THE HANDS OF OUR MOST ANCIENT ENEMY AND YOU ARE KEEPING ME FROM SEEING TO HIS FUNERAL. YOU WILL DELIVER TO ME THE AI AND YOU WILL ASSIST US IN MOVING HIS BODY WITH DUE RESPECT AND YOU WILL DO THIS BECAUSE IF YOU DO NOT I WILL TEAR YOUR MIND FROM YOUR BODY AND SUSPEND IT FOR ETERNITY IN A HELLISH DIMENSION OF SUFFERING AND AGONY. I AM THROUGH WITH DIPLOMACY. **OBEY.**_

You feel light headed when it ends and the silence of your own thoughts return. The sudden absence of grief and white-hot rage leaves you abyssally cold. The carapace before you has dropped his gun and is curled up, clutching his head. You think that you might have just heard a whisper of what the carapace was put through. Lalonde spins on her heel and marches for the body. After a short while, the carapace uncurls and looks up at you.

You shrug.

“Told you she was pissed.”

* * *

Evidently human funerary rites involve corpseboxes and firing them into stars, which you think is a pretty hardcore way to go. Beforehand though, Rose removes the Knight's helmet to look at her brother one last time. You get the genetic twin thing, because he really does look just like her. At least as far as you can ID alien features. You look anywhere but at the two of them in their red and purple armour and eventually realize the carapaces are still there.

“Come on guys, let's give them a minute.”

You lead them out like wrigglers, feeling absolutely ridiculous about it and about feeling uncomfortable with another person's death.

“So, uh. You guys were what, the Knight's minions? Pages, I guess?”

“No! We were his friends, his companions.”

“Yeah? Didn't really think humans made those.”

“Yes, the Seer is more... is less loose than the Knight was.”

“Loose?”

“He would call it chill. He strove to be the epitome of cool and collected at all times, attempting jokes to show nonchalance even when the situation did not call for them.”

“Uh- _huh _.”__

“He was a pretentious child, essentially. But he was nice to us and never talked down to the Mayor.”

You look at the smaller carapace as he trails the pair of you. The little eyes stare back at you blankly.

“Was he always like this?”

“He was quiet before, but no, not like this. I think the Knight's death might have been too much.”

“Yeah,” you've seen trauma before, seen it lots after culling was made illegal. You don't envy the little dude. “Oh right, what's your name?”

“At present, I am the Aimless Renegade.”

“Oh shit, you're like, old Dersite or whatever? Still going by job titles instead of names?”

“It's something of a habit,” he admits.

“Yeah, well, all that is a mouthful. I'm just going to shorten it to AR.”

“The Knight said that would not do, since that was the name of the AI. He called me Ron.”

“Ron.” It's not a question, per se. More of a general request for clarification of mental state. Whose, you're not sure.

“Ron,” he confirms.

You weren't even sure where you were leading them. You look up now and find yourself outside the armoury. Then you look down the rest of the hall and start opening up doors.

“What are you doing, troll?”

“The name's Vriska Serket. And I'm looking for a place to stash you two.”

“We're not _cargo_ you arrogant-”

“Yeah yeah, just bad word choice, me being terrible at making nice. You'll get used to it. Here, this is what you lot sleep on, right?” You show them a room with one of those flat things.

“That is one bed, yes.”

“So?”

“There are two of us,” he says, slowly enunciating the numeral, like you're an idiot.

“Oh my shit, then find another. Holy crap. This is not hard Ron. I am trying to be nice and accommodating in light of the fact that my boss is probably not in the best shape to deal with two refugees from the Last Stand of Dave Strider on Dust Planet Number _I don't give a fuck_.”

He stares at you while the Mayor goes into the room and gets on the bed, slowly laying that eerie white sword down. Then he lays down next to it and closes his eyes. The Aimless Renegade looks between him and you and steps out of the room. The hatch swishes shut, leaving the Mayor in darkness.

“Thank you.”

“Awesome, recognition. You're welcome.” You turn and head back down the hall, but stop when you remember something. “Oh yeah, uh, computer?”

“Yes?” replies the disembodied female voice.

“Um, scan the new organism in front of me. Create new authorization file: Renegade, Aimless. Uh, also known as Ron. Then give him run of this wing. Do the same for the one in the other room, file name: Mayor, The. Wait, no. Deny access to armoury. Both of them.”

“Armoury?” You're not sure if you like the gleam of his eyes or not.

“Yeah, think a warship like this doesn't have one?”

“I wasn't aware this was a warship. I am pretty sure it is highly illegal for non-trolls to own warships in the Alternian Empire.”

“Yeah, you go ahead and try to tell Lalonde that.”

“Pass.”

“So. Armoury. Wanna kill some time?”

A carapacian grin is one of the more disturbing things you've ever seen in your life.

* * *

Hours later, the doors swish open to reveal an unarmoured Lalonde, clad all in black. She blinks at the sight of the two of you sat on over-turned crates, cleaning and polishing the Renegade's weapons.

“Hey Lalonde. This is Ron. He brought us a shitton of guns. Can we keep him?”

The Seer blinks some more.

“The Mayor's with me,” the Renegade inserts and, quick to add perceived value, continues, “I am pretty sure I can get him to release Caledfwlch after a period of mourning.”

Another blink. This is really disconcerting. She's supposed to have some kind of snark ready to go, you can have a verbal joust, you'll lose, but hopefully convince her to keep the carapaces, because holy crap you've needed someone to talk shop with and Ron is absurdly knowledgeable about weapons for a carapace. Lalonde finally manages,

“Mourning. Yes. Very well, stay.”

And she turns and leaves. You and the Renegade look at each other and he shrugs, going back to re-fitting the focusing lens of one of the laser rifles. You get up though, and say,

“I'd... maybe I should go after her.”

“Sure. I'll be here.”

* * *

The first place you check is her quarters, but she not there, which you can tell because the hatch is still slightly crooked in its housing from where you ripped it out. Her office is empty, a grey silent room, much smaller than you expected from the grand holovistas. You make a pass of all the active arms, the viewing gallery, to your quarters and back to the central hub before you hear the quiet whisper of something coming from her arm of the ship. Silently you tread through the halls until the whispers resolve into soft crying.

It's coming from her rooms. She must have snuck around the other way past you when you one went way in the hub. Didn't have to sneak even, could have just gone on her way. You wait outside her door, shifting from one foot to the next, not sure of what you're trying to accomplish here. It's not like you're moirails, or even friends. She's your boss, and human to boot. But proximity breeds... something, so you feel like you need to do something.

You're great at feelings.

The best.

* * *

Hours later, her hatch grinds open and you start awake and look up and the dark shadow looming above you. She looks terrible. Dark bags hang under bloodshot eyes and crust is forming in their corners. Black lipstick is smeared across her jaw and across one bare hand. The other is still in a long black glove and holding a bottle.

“What are you doing here, Serket?” she slurrs. You scramble to your feet and promptly shove your hands into your pockets. In response, you shrug.

“I wasn't aware that when I got an agent, I also got a faithful chihuahua.”

“I don't know what that is.”

“Guard barkbeast.”

“Hey.”

“It was charitable. Well, mostly. Are you going to let me pass?”

You move to the side and fall into step beside her. She sways slightly, and the reek coming off her is one of an impressive bender.

“What are you doing, Lalonde?”

She looks at you incredulously. “I am getting commmpletely oblitrarated, what’s it look like, Serket?”

“Well yeah. But I thought you had more sense than this,” you say as you come to what passes for a mess on this ship. She opens a low cabinet and fishes around for something.

“I must be drinker than I thought, because you, _you_ are lecturing me about drinking too much,” she says, straightening unsteadily.

“No,” you say, taking the bottle from her, “I meant I thought you had more sense than to drink alone.”

You pry the cork out with your teeth, spit it out and take a pull of something harsh and salty. It doesn't burn too much going down, but it leaves your mouth numb. Fuck, you're going to need water with this one, you can tell. Handing the bottle back to Lalonde, you get down two glasses and a pitcher. While you fill the pitcher with water from the sanitary tap, you glance at Lalonde, who is staring at you dully, with something like confusion on her face. This half-there Seer is really starting to get to you. You nod at the table and after a moment, she goes and sits at it, staring at the bottle she chose.

When you sit opposite her, she mumbles, “Why are you doing this, Vriska?”

You don't answer, not before pouring out two measures of the stuff. It sloshes out a nice amber colour. You wonder idly what it is. When that's done, you pick one of the glasses up and regard her over its rim. She raises her eyes when she realizes you're waiting for her to look up.

“I've got no doubt you're as tough a bitch as I am, but the fact of the matter is, when I lost someone, I could have used someone else there. Not even to talk to, just someone who understood, vaguely. Why be miserable alone, when you can be miserable together.”

Dull violet eyes, washed out almost to grey hold yours before there's the barest spark of life.

“That was a terrible line,” she says, taking her glass up and looking into it. You hold yours forward for a toast and presently she clinks her glass against yours.

“To the dreaming dead.”

* * *

You spend the hours talking about a girl with suns for eyes, and a boy who never showed his. The cycle passes into something like night and when Rose eventually passes out, a full bottle ahead of you, you carry her back to her quarters. It's not pity, you tell yourself, it's respect.


	6. Operations: 8-Ball & Idolatry

“I can't keep doin' this anymore,” you groan. On your back, you're staring at the ceiling with Lalonde looking down at you. Something like distress and certainly concern flashes across her face before she composes herself.

“Whatever do you mean?” she asks as she enters you, delicate as anything.

* * *

_hours earlier_

“We're bust here, Lalonde. No box, just some... ball thingy.”

 _Could you_ be _more vague?_ ”

“Yeah, if I gave it some thought.”

_Describe it, if you please._

You peer at the thing. It's a sphere of pure silver and feels a lot heavier than it would initially suggest. You would guess the thing is ornamental, except you're in a robotics facility and it was under like a dozen scanners earlier today. You turn it over and over and nothing really seems to stand out.

On a hunch, you reach out psychically and try to interact with the thing. You're absolutely terrible at any sort of reading, but if you make contact that-

“Huh.”

_That is not a description._

“I tried to make contact with it with the Eightfold Eye and I _swear_ -”

A lot of things happen at once. You suddenly become more _aware_ of Rose in your head than you've ever been and you realize it's because you're not the source of the awareness. Then doors like lead slam down all around your senses and

_**THREAT DETECTED** _

_Vriska!_

_**SELF TERMINATING** _

And then the damn thing blows up in your face.

* * *

Of course, it's not her entering you per se, it the armature of the medical drone fishing about in eye socket for any remaining foreign objects. And you're on your back in the medblock. And Lalonde is above you and to your right, idly fiddling with the drone's scanner.

“Look, I'm good with upping our mission profile, but if you're going to keep throwing me into these situations, I am going to need either clearance to cut loose or something like backup.”

Since her brother's death at the hand of things she _still_ won't discuss but you suspect had something to do with that orb, the Seer has escalated your missions, both in danger and frequency. She's running hot and you are in danger of burning out.

* * *

_Vriska!_

“Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow OW!”

 _You need to evacuate,_ NOW _!_

You stumble out of the smoking lab, clutching at the ruin of your face and trying to fight through the pain. You manage to ramp up your combat chemical production and while the pain doesn't go away, your senses snap into high focus and you grab ahold of them.

Alarms are going off all over and the whole place is a riot of colour. Shit. You're going to assume this is a worst case scenario and so you book it for the elevator shaft. You're halfway down the sterile, featureless corridor when the whole thing shakes and you hear the tragically familiar whine of a combat drone's plasma cannon.

You throw yourself forward in a roll and the superheated shot sears your back, setting your jacket aflame. Swearing, you come out of your roll, rip what you need out of the pockets, jam them into your pants and then set your blaster for overload. A spin divests you of the jacket, which you hurl down the hall at the drone's face as you leap back through the hole the damn thing melted through the elevator doors. You miscalculate slightly and sear through your pant leg on the molten edge. The twitch sends you tumbling down the shaft so your instincts take over and you flail for a handhold. The upside is that that you catch yourself. The downside is that you give yourself friction burns when you slide down the damn elevator cable.

The flash- _FWOOMP_ of your blaster incinerating your jacket and maybe some of the drone's outer chitin reminds you you don't have time to catch your breath, so you deploy your antigrav generators and haul yourself up the shaft at speed, flying up the cable and over hand. You hit the top of the shaft and pry the doors open. Schematics flit past in your head and tell you the stairs to the roof are to your left.

_Resistance at extraction point._

When you finally make it to the roof, you've been cut off by a security squad, haphazardly pointing weapons at you.

* * *

“I'm not saying I want out, but cripple or no-”

“Oh for heaven's sake, you will not be crippled. Your prosthetic eye will be ready by the time this scan is done and then you will be working at one-hundred percent, or better.”

“I still won't have-”

A glare. “One. Hundred. Percent.”

* * *

You don't have time for this. This is personal security, not military, but they can pin you down long enough for the professionals to show up. So you reach out with your Vision Eightfold-

-and drop, screaming as stinging fire stabs through your brain and a gush of pulp and fluid spurts from your ruined eye.

_What was that? Serket, report. What is going on?_

The guards start, and one fires wildly, but the rest look at each other in confusion. A few advance, shouting the usual bullshit but you can't be bothered to pay attention. Your brain is aflame, you can't use your psychics and you're blind in one eye. The pain, confusion and anger are bogging down your focus, that edge you need to get out of this alive, to get back to the ship, to complete the mission to-

-to get back to Lalonde.

_Vriska, what are you-_

“Shut up,” you whisper. The human is crowding your brainspace, the guards are crowding your personal space and you can feel the manic swing towards despair coming again, the claws of failure dragging you down.

_Vriska, I need you to-_

“Shut up!” you scream, straightening and goring a bronze-blood. The other three fire, reflexively. This close, even these incompetents can't miss. Lasers sear into your limbs, but their power gets leeched by stealth suit, and they only burn, they don't penetrate. It's all you need to punch your way through one's chest and take his gun. The body is your shield as you scorch their faces clean off and then you're running for your extract point, across the roofs of the hive cluster, half a city away.

* * *

A glare. “One. Hundred. Percent.”

“...and eight?”

She rolls her eyes at that. “While I am not opposed to criticism of our current modus operandi, any further remarks that pathetic will see me cutting the anaesthetic.”

You grin and almost wink, before realizing that is an incredibly poor idea. You are about to push your point when she continues,

“Could you abide working with a non-troll?”

One of your eyes blinks, the other being held open by the strange secretions of the drone as it is.

“The Aimless Renegade. If you are amenable, he appears to have a reasonable amount of firearms training and I expect he has flight experience as well, as my brother was a terrible pilot. I will not approve his participation in highly clandestine missions, you being barely capable as you are, but for run of the mill piracy or smash and grabs I do not see why not.”

“...you want me to take Ron along?”

“No, I am responding for your quite reasonable request for back-up with extant resources. I do not _want_ anything.” She goes back to the scanner. “Save perhaps for the continued success of this operation.”

You let your gaze return to the ceiling. Huh. Not exactly what you were thinking of, but you can work with it. You've done more with less.

* * *

Days later, you stick your head into the armoury.

“Hey Ron, Lalonde has me doing a smash and grab, how are you at piloting a shuttle?”

The carapace stares at you, face unreadable as ever. “I lack a pilot’s license.”

“Not answering my question.”

“Flying without a pilot’s license would be a criminal offense on any civilized world.”

You pause a moment, eye’s narrowing. You’ve run missions with a legislacerator before. You know the sound of someone trying to weasel by on a technicality to get away with some petty offense. Except in this case, you’re trying to get him away with something.

“Yeah, it’s a festering shithole not deserving of the term ‘civilized.’”

The little dude hops off a bench and starts loading weapon after weapon into his captchalogue. You wonder if anyone ever taught him how to reload. Before you can consider the worth of giving him some shock troop training, he slaps together the blaster he was tending to and turns to you.

“Ready, captain.”

Captain. Hmm. You’re used to “commander,” but you like the nautical implications of the term. 

_You are_ not _captain of this ship. By all means keep calling yourself commander. A commander of one, I suppose, but a commander all the same._

You scowl. “The Seer doesn’t like me being called captain. So you go ahead and keep doing that.”

He gives you a funny look, but salutes all the same.

* * *

The festering shithole that you are deployed to is a smoking shithole by the time the pair of you are done.

You feel vaguely bad about the utter destruction you left behind you, but the look on Lalonde’s face as she read over the collateral damage report was priceless. You’ve never broken twenty million before, and there were only two of you. She later informs you, looking ragged at the calculations, that there weren’t twenty million worth of resources on the planet, but that your report still added up.

It takes a few missions for you two to get into something of a working partnership. You suffer a few burns, shrapnel wounds and other miscellaneous injuries and he sustains a few concussions and deafenings in return, but you work it out. You’re the spear, the initial shockwave of damage, he mops up. He’s small, so easily overlooked to most species, and no one expects a carapacian to be a psychotic gun nut, so the stuff he gets away with… well, it should be criminal. You don’t tell him that though.

It’s not all moonshine and roses though.

* * *

“‘Blow up the pillar, Serket. It’ll be an easy job for you two psychopaths. You can even use as much explosive as you like. It’ll be an easy job, tee hee snark snark smirk smirk.’ Oh my gods I hate that woman.”

You grunt an approximation of Lalonde’s tone, glowering at the darkness. You’ve been in less humiliating situations.

“I apologize, Commander. We should have just bombarded the site from a distance. I was too eager to experiment with charges.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. We had no way of knowing these friggin’ primitives could touch us.”

You and the Renegade had inserted onto this planet to destroy some kind of mind-control device that was corrupting the locals. Something the horrorterrors or whatever had co-opted from another consumed species, a way of creating sleeper-races of agents ready to assist them in their inevitable invasion. Hell, sleeper-races. The sheer scale of that idea just sends shivers down your spine.

Unfortunately, as primitive as these reptilian snapbeast-like things are, they had some pretty devastating chemical warfare tools and some kind of knock-out agent put the two of you out of commission in seconds flat. The rope they’d bound you in was weak enough that you could break out of it easily enough. Of course, they’re stealthy bastards and had apparently been watching you all along, so as soon as you got out of the cave, you got hit with another pouch of knock-out dust.

Now Ron’s bound again, and you’re _pinned under a fucking rock_. There’s flickering lights outside and some kind of hideously discordant music. You have no tools, no weapons and whatever psychic bullshit is going on with that pillar is enough to jam your line to Lalonde. You are pretty sure you are about to be some kind of sacrifice for a tech-cult. Note to self: if you get out of this mess, bring back-up communications. 

The music gets louder and some of the flickers come your way, and sure enough, a procession of the squat, huge-jawed aliens come to take you away. They haul Ron to his feet and shuffle him out, with him protesting all the while. Then they take out a now-familiar pouch.

“Oh come on! At least make this SOMEWHAT fai-”

* * *

The next time you wake up, it’s with a massive headache and your limbs so heavily bound your joints grind painfully at the slightest movement. The guards propping you up step back and you nearly stumble over the edge of the platform you’re on.

“Commander! Careful.”

“Nuhhh, no shit.” Holy crap that’s a lot of spikes. The pit you’re above isn’t particularly deep, but the forest of spines beneath you is dense and glittering with already-shed blood.

“Well if that isn’t one of the worst execution ideas I’ve ever seen, I’ll eat my best boots.”

“I don’t think it’s an execution ground normally, Commander Serket.” The carapace nods at the end of the platform you’re on, where a smaller snapbeast-alien is getting shit painted all over it. You’re not an expert in xenobiology, but it looks hella out of it. Lethargic, kind of glassy-eyed from what you can tell. But as you watch, it accepts some kind of woven necklace, dons it and shouts something into the night. Unseen crowds, out of the torchlight respond wildly, cheering. Then, with a short run up, it hurls itself to its gory doom.

“Note to self: next time just glass the thing from orbit. Can we do that? I don’t know if we can do that,” you mutter to yourself as the guards move towards you and your mind races. The Renegade keeps glancing between you and the pit and you have to stop yourself from yelling “Well, what do you want _me_ to do?”

But then, as six of the hideous little things start to shuffle your weights forward, dragging you, your artificial eye starts to flicker. And across your vision, like a HUD, scrolls 

RL: We can do that. Indeed, next time will likely result in orbital bombardment. In the meantime, prepare for transmission.

“Transmission? What the shit, Lalonde?”

Then the artificial eye protrudes slightly and whirrs softly. It is incredibly uncomfortable to be able to see the dark metal sticking out past your nose, but you get over it real quick when suddenly light and sound vomit forth in a blinding display of holographics.

RL: Hold still, would you.

Your guards drop the weights and fall back with shrieking chitters as the shifting mass of bright pastel lights forms into a hooded figure bearing a stylized sunburst on her chest. 

“You have got to be kidding me.”

The image of your Seer raises its hand and points down at the platform. Then your headache gets worse as the tiny fucking eyeball begins to boom with her speech. You hiss in pain as Lalonde speechifies at the terrified little things, but you do your best to try and keep the image steady. Which is a lot harder to do when _the bass of her voice is shaking your thinkpan_.

With a booming finale, Lalonde sweeps her arm across her body angrily and explodes into a shower of soft-hued particles. The snapbeasts scatter, screaming, starting a small stampede to get away from the site.

RL: You are clear. My apologies for the delay. I only thought to check your camera once you were late. The psychic jamming of the pillar is impressive. Get yourselves out of there and I will see about destroying the thing from orbit.

“And why couldn’t we _lead_ with that plan?”

RL: Because I did not want to start a new cult when the heavens opened up and smote their idol.

“So you sent in people with firebricks and boomtubes. Great thinking, stellar planning, I am so confident in your leadership right now,” you mutter as the Aimless Renegade saws open his binds on a discarded spear.

RL: Spare me and get clear.   
RL: Additionally I will expect a full report on how a bunch of primitives who haven’t yet discovered explosive propellant managed to capture the finest warrior in the Alternian Empire and a carapace carrying more weaponry than a private army.

“Oh I’ll give you a fucking report. All nice and typed out on a hard tablet that I’ll then SHOVE DOWN YOUR-”

* * *

The ship is apparently armed with a super-scaled version of the pistol she gave you. The shot, when fired, blasts through the atmosphere, catching fire and scorching the air, creating a vacuum that sucks up the dust and dirt created by its hyper-sonic impact with the ground, and then releasing it in a shockwave that definitely resulted in changes to the surrounding landscape, not to mention the religious canon of those bloody aliens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excerpt of the words of The Seer of Light, Rose Lalonde, given to the Nakkodile peoples, 800-years prior to contact.
> 
> ...And these are my faithful  
> Come to deliver you from darkness  
> From your unwitting slavery and genocide.  
> Here ends your worship of gods beyond time and space.  
> For I am the Sun in the Void, The Light of the Shepard  
> And I bid you flee from your captivity, be free.  
> Now go! Before my wrath makes a fire of your heavens.


	7. Operations: Shadowboxer & The Rock

One of the reasons the Alternian Empire, that is to say, trolls, have been so successful in their conquest of the galaxy is that as a fighting force they are less skilled (though they do have elite units) than purely, tenaciously, overwhelmingly indomitable. When the war machine gets rolling, nothing can stop it, largely due to the fact that each individual cog and wheel is built harder, tougher and meaner than any other five individual aliens.

You've seen your troops fight on through gaping holes in their abdomens. You watched a cavalreaper tear himself out from under a slammed-shut bulkhead, losing both his legs by triggering his rocket lance to kill an alien commander. One of the best warriors you've ever seen lost vision in both her eyes and then trained her other senses to compensate. The fact that the single most common cause of troll death was the cull said something about your species, even if you weren't sure what that was.

So when you say that losing a limb is normally no big deal, you know where you're coming from. Losing a limb in the middle of combat is more problematic. Being literally disarmed by a virtually invisible enemy is a serious problem, especially considering it then used your arm to _knock your heavy support unconscious_.

Lalonde sent you here as a favour for Vantas and Peixes. The Old Guard were apparently stockpiling ancient artefacts and a whole lot of them looked like “weapons of unknown provenance.” That was enough to set the Seer on the trail, and for her to send you in like the final sanction you were. Your first clue should have been the completely unmanned husktrailers dropping off boxes. Then you got into the facility and sure enough, it was completely empty, except for a growing pile of haphazardly dropped boxes.

So your senses screamed “Trap!” Lalonde screamed _Get out of there!_ and Ron was already booking it for the exit when you took the first blast of plasma across the ribs, spinning you to the ground.

* * *

You love combat weave. You love it to pieces. Otherwise you would be in smoking little pieces right now. On the other hand, you are under attack by an unknown enemy with high-powered weaponry and no armour, with limited support. You force yourself to roll _away, anywhere_ as another shot melts the concrete beneath you. Scrabbling up, you bolt for the Renegade, who is laying down covering fire in the general direction of jack-shit.

“Enemy composition?!”

“Something big and invisible!”

“Greeeeeeeeat.”

“We should keep moving, Commander.”

“Yeah, go, I'll cover you,” you say, drawing the autoblaster you'd chosen for this mess. Figuring you'd need something with a higher rate of fire with a whole facility of Old Guard to kill, you'd brought this thing, but now you were facing a very different kind of enemy. A flicker of movement, of light and shadow, and you loose a long burst at something even as it fires on Ron. He dives and gets behind cover, barely getting grazed by the superheated shot.

You only had a glimpse of the thing, enough to tell that it was bipedal, before it faded from view again. You swear, then swear again and focus on your eye, bringing up the scanners that Lalonde had installed. Another range of sight floods your senses, and there's a bare moment of disorientation before you remember that you should probably shift cover. The crates you were hidden behind evaporate in a plasma blast a moment later and you're sprinting for the Renegade.

And so it goes, a terrifying game of cat-and-mouse. You and the carapacian cover one another as you try to find exits that aren't locked down by thick, immovable doors. The high-tension atmosphere is ripped apart at irregular intervals by your stuttering fire or the crackling roar of your attacker's plasma. One moment, you're holding your breath to try and eke out the barest sound of its passage and the next you're tumbling across the ground, hurled from a plasma explosion. It never lets you stay still, doesn't give you time to rig explosives to blow your way out. It is a consummate hunter, driving you to your doom.

“We can't keep this up,” you whisper. “We need to take the fight to the damn thing.”

You have time to notice his eyes go wide and raise his weapon in your direction. You're already spinning, bringing the autoblaster up one handed to hose whatever is closing behind you. But the thing is fast, unbelievably fast and it's right in your face and grabbing your arm. A sharp, metallic boot gets planted in your chest, and then there's the worst pain you've ever felt in your life and you're flying back. You hit a set of shelves, cave them in and if they'd had anything on them, you'd be buried. As it is, you raise your head groggily to watch the thing backhand the Aimless Renegade with your own arm.

It's hideous, a horrible, hunchbacked amalgamation of metal and flesh. Flexible carbon muscles turn into bulging fibrous growths to move sharp, spindly arms. Flange-like jaws surround a single red-pulsing ocular. They part and hiss wetly at you and then it melts into invisibility again.

_Vriska! Extract now! The mission is over! You can't take that thing, extract now!_

“Trying,” you groan, drawing your sword. Like it'll be useful without a ranged weapon to complement it, but you need some kind of defense, if only to make you feel better about your situation. You wince, concentrate and deploy clotters to the torn, pouring rent where your arm used to be. Then another chemical cocktail goes active, _finally_ and your senses go into overdrive. Eyes dart from shadow to shadow as a plan forms.

 _No, get OUT of there, Vriska! This enemy is beyond you!_ That's definitely real fear, real panic in Lalonde's mental casting, but you ignore it. The damn thing is playing with you. Whatever it is, it's not unthinkingly robotic, not pure reason and orders, and that'll be its downfall. It should have vapourized you the first goddamn chance it had, used that blinding speed to end you.

The blaze of its plasma weapon gives you enough time to dodge to the side and then _charge_. The hesitation of every sentient species when faced with a lunatic, screaming, charging blue-blood confirms your suspicion and gives you that familiar thrill. The anticipation of victory, the knowledge that you can do this. Then it fires again, dead centre. You don't try to dodge, but instead swing your sword, catching the blast on the flat of the blade and blasting it to pieces. The molten shrapnel is a small concern at this point. In a flash of masochistic inspiration, you slap the red-hot remains of the blade onto your clotting wound and sear it shut.

Then you leap, powerful leg muscles driving you meters into the air. You leave the sword hanging stuck from the cooked mess of your shoulder socket and decaptcha the Butcher into your free hand. Your enemy is still tracking you, but its gun is still cooling and your actions have obviously put it on its back foot because it hasn't entered stealth again. And then the Butcher roars in combat for the first time in millennia and the ocular sensor explodes into a shower of putrid organic and synthetic fluid.

You land on its shoulders, still firing, punching huge craters in the thing's deformed chassis, punching clean through in places, until the massive pistol grows hot in your hands and you drop it. Ripping the shattered sword from your shoulder with a blood-curdling scream, you hack down with all your remaining might and bisect the thing.

_Holy shit._

The combat cocktail is beginning to fade along with your natural stimulants and you've felt better. You need out, you need a fucking medbay, and you might want a new arm. You giggle at the idea, already becoming delirious. You stagger over to the Renegade and nudge him with your toe. When he doesn't stir, you give him a vicious kick to the ribs, which sets him up, groaning.

“Hey,” you growl. “Don't forget my fucking autoblaster on the way out.”

And then you pass out on top of him.

* * *

You're aware of the familiar antiseptic smell of a medbay before you even wake up, the damn thing insinuating itself into your daymares and reminding you that you should probably not be in a horrific hallway made of bulging organic metal that wants to eat you. You wake about the time the bloodshot eyes grow teeth and start gnawing off your arm.

A slight, warm hand catches yours as you instinctively reach for the lack of your limb, squeezing slightly.

“Don't. The housing for your prosthesis still needs to integrate with your nervous system.”

“Good morning to you too, Seer,” you mumble.

“Indeed. Pardon my terrible bedside manner. I am an atrocious care professional.”

“You people have care professionals? Hell, no wonder you got wiped out.”

Lalonde is quiet a long while and you almost doze off again. “Yes, that may very well be so. In any case, your performance today was, well. Nothing short of incredible.”

“Yeah, I'm awesome. I know.”

“Serket. Try to take what nearly killed you seriously.”

“Yeah, there you go: nearly. It didn't.”

A frustrated sigh.

“How's Ron?”

“The Aimless Renegade is well. His kind do not experience concussions and his worse wound is the one you inflicted.”

You want to feel guilty about that, but grin instead. Welcome to fighting with Vriska Serket, walking disaster area. But you sober up. As much as you hate to admit it, Lalonde is right. You got lucky, and you're ok with that. But you've got people, well, a person, under your command now.

“You gonna tell me what that thing was?”

“And old, old enemy, warped beyond its original purpose into something worse by the horrorterrors. Their foremost corrupted, their shock troops.”

“Those are the things that killed your brother?”

She tenses, but shakes her head. “They're of a kind, yes. But what you fought was a... model... in use for millennia. What killed the Knight of Time was custom-created to surpass his abilities.”

“Shit. That thing was outdated?”

“Nothing that our foe can deploy can be considered outdated by your understanding.” She holds up a hand to forestall protest. “In many cases, not by my understanding either.”

You grumble, but hold your tongue.

“Still, the fact that you beat it reaffirms my choice in you and your species. Your hardiness is phenomenal, and that fight... I will admit I could not follow your train of thought in the middle of combat. It was too fast, even for me.”

“Yeah well. It underestimated me, wanted to toy with me.”

“Impossible. They are perfected AI and...” she trails off. “No. No, not anymore they're not. You're might be right. In making them terror weapons, our enemy has robbed them of their greatest asset. What you fought wasn't a killing machine, it was a hunter.”

“That's the impression I got, yeah. Don't get me wrong, it was still stupidly good at what it did. Not tooting my own horn to say it, but I doubt there are five other trolls in the empire that could have taken that thing.”

The Seer is staring at you now, calculating. “How many stock trolls do you suppose would it take to eliminate such a thing by themselves?”

“Hell, I don't know. A squad of grunts? Two of conscripts? Smaller groups of elite units, depending on the unit.”

“Hmm. Perhaps Peixes' upheaval may yet give us an edge, presuming she doesn't completely disarm her forces. Especially now that these Old Guard remnant may be compromised.”

You give her a sour look. “That was on purpose.”

A little bow of a smile. A smirk, really.

“Perhaps. Further to that line of inquiry, a prosthesis should be ready within the day.”

“No,” you say, shaking your head.

“Excuse me?” There's no offence in her tone, just genuine confusion.

“Look, I get that we're going to be getting thrown against worse and worse. If I'm- If we're going to survive that, we're going to need to seriously upgrade our arsenal. Some stock prosthetic isn't going to cut it.”

“I suppose you have some idea of what you want then?'

“Yeah. A few flitcritters with one stone.”

* * *

A few hours later, after some time at her terminal, you've got a briefing ready for her. And Ron. And for some reason, the Mayor, who is sitting on a rock at this false beach, looking over the waves, kicking his little feet and drinking one of those revolting glucose liquid rations. Lalonde plugs your briefing file into the system and huge, hulking indigo materializes.

“His name is Equius Zahhak, and on top of being, like, five hundred pounds of manners, muscle and... something else starting with 'M,' he's one of the most talented robotics engineers I've ever seen.”

“And you want to recruit him,” the Seer says, scanning the briefing. She frowns. “Old Guard aligned, passionate haemocastist.”

“Yeah and that's not even scratching the surface of his weirdness, which I refuse to get into here on the basis of the fact that I just ate. But! He's currently in captivity following a completely unexpected bit of treason in refusing to wipe out a low-blood settlement.”

“That sounds like something the haemospectrum would consider a culling offense.”

“Well, the settlement was also housing his moirail at the time, which is a pretty big case for leniency.”

Rose stares at you flatly for a moment and then shakes her head. “Trolls: perfectly willing to kill each other over minor physical defects but as soon as your convoluted romances come into the equation, you all go soft as butter.”

“I know, right? I never got it. Still, he's alive, he's damn good and he's like me: a deniable asset, for any and all sides.”

That gets you a sharp look. “That is rather sound logic, Serket. Careful you don't rise any further in my esteem, things could get rough for you.”

“I like rough,” you grin and waggle your eyebrows. The look you get back could be described as incredulous. The Renegade coughs, discretely. Things get awkward, but you bull on through because that's what you do in any and all situations.

“Anyways, I'm going to go ahead and suggest we bust him out of this prison station, possibly blast the thing to pieces behind us because at this point: fuck the Old Guard and get ourselves a decent tech specialist.”

Rose swipes through the rest of the report and her eyebrows shoot up. “ _This_ is your insertion plan?”

“Yeah, subtle, isn't it?”

“I did not think you worthy of the term. Rising, Serket, rising.”

* * *

“Halt and present identification!”

You gesture at your carapace servant and he whips out two ident cards out of his little suit like they were twin pistols. The lime-blood glares at the impertinent movement and collects them, giving them a scan through his reader.

“Neophyte Pyrope. Your purpose here?”

“The Truly Cruellest Bar has decided to re-open the case of the prisoner Zahhak, in light of the possibility of extracting information to further the cull of the rebellion.” The words sound appropriately ridiculous coming out of your mouth, and you turn your amused grin into the psychotic grimace of eagerness you remember so well.

“Zahhak...” the lime-blood consults his terminal, frowning. “We do have one here by that name. Death sentence commuted to life for reasons of extenuating moirallegiance conflict...”

“Don't worry, lime-blood, I'm not here to change any of that. I just need to grill him some.”

Relief passes over his face as the prospect of reams of paperwork and protocol disappear. “I suppose you have the proper documentation?”

The little carapace thrusts out the garbage in triplicate. The lime-blood takes one ream and flips through it, barely looking over the customary stamps, seals and authorizations. He nods and then summons an administrative drone.

“Take the Neophyte to Block B and transfer her to the officer on duty.”

You follow the little chitinous thing through the dim corridors of the prison station. Fully two miles long and a quarter of that wide, it's designed less as a proper holding facility and more of a processing centre for culls. Commissioned in the early days of Feferi's Reformation, when the high-bloods thought they stood a chance against the tide of change coming for them, it's seen little use since.

At Block B, you present another set of forms to the officer on duty and you get a pair of guards to escort you to Zahhak's cell. When you get there, you toss your initial extraction plan out the airlock. Holy shit he got big. He's at least twice, maybe three times as broad as you and almost as tall as Feferi and, what’s more, held down with chains thicker than your arms. He's not going to fit into the Renegade's captchalogue.

“Neophyte Pyrope to question the prisoner Equius Zahhak!” one of the guards barks authoritatively. Equius's head comes up in confusion and takes in your get up. You're resplendent in the eye-aching colours Terezi used to favour, complete with a mocked-up dragonyy’yd-head canesword. You waggle your eyebrows at him as he breaks out in a sweat.

“This is not Terezi Pyrope.”

What.

“What?”

“Neophyte Terezi Pyrope is dead and that is an impertinent rebel posing as her.”

“Oh for-” Before the guards can appropriately react, your arms snap out to either side, punching them both in the thinkpan.

“The hell is wrong with you, Zahhak? I was looking forward to having an undercover mission go well for once.”

“I will not take part in this blatant display of treason.”

“I like this guy already,” comments Ron.

“You let your servants speak like this now, Serket?” the huge indigo asks. “How far has the rebellion corrupted you?”

“Yeah, like I gave two shits about the haemocaste even before the reformation.”

“True, you were always an impudent one.”

“Anyways, I'm busting you out. You're needed.”

“I haven't the foggiest what treason the rebellion would have need of me for, but I adamantly refuse with all my strength.”

“Not with the rebell- refor- agh! Forces! Anymore, Zahhak.” you say as you look for the keycard on the guards, rifling through their pockets.

“So you have finally become the gamblignant you aspired to.”

“Yeah, not that either,” you say, swiping the card. “Equius Zahhak, on the vague authority granted to me by Her Imperious Condescension Feferi Peixes and the Seer of Light to do whatever the hell I want, I am conscripting your obstinate ass into saving the galaxy.”

He stares at you like you're insane, breaking into further sweat.

“Now are you coming with me or am I going to have to knock your ass out too.”

“How do you expect to do that with an entire station between you and wherever it is you plan on taking me?”

“Look, you enormous dingbat, I know you went down early in the conflict to save Nep's ass, so you missed a lot of it, so let me make this clear: there are not enough trolls, guns or drones within a light year to stop me _on my worst day_.”

He looks at you like he might actually believe it. That, or like you're physically dangerous to him now.

“Do you actually speak with the authority of the Empress?”

“Gave me my orders herself,” you lie casually. It's not really a lie, though, so you don't feel too bad.

“Hrm,” the rumble fairly well shakes the room. “I suppose since I am already a traitor to the haemospectrum, I had better remain loyal to the extant Empress.”

“Great, fantastic! Ron, get those friggin' chains off this hoofbeast and let's go.”

Of course the Renegade has a laser cutter in his stash.

* * *

“Your extraction plan could use some work, cerulean,” Zahhak comments as he gingerly taps at the terminal to the sound of hissing plasma and laser fire.

“My extraction plan was to _walk out of here_ with you in a captchalogue, but then you went and got _even more swole_!” you yell as you return fire at the oncoming drones with an appropriated blaster rifle.

“My sincere apologies for my physical superiority manifesting.”

“Oh my god, would you just hurry up with that?!”

“I am almost prepared, but I will not engage in this heinous act without a direct order.”

“I really like this guy,” laughs Ron.

“Oh my god I hate you all. Fine! I order you to release all the prisoners already Zahhak! Do it!”

“Do not give me orders, low-blood filth,” he responds casually as he taps the final key, crushing the terminal interface, but setting off a station-wide station-wide alarm as all the cells swing open.

“Finally!” you shout as the drones freeze, priorities shifting in their bioprocessor brains. “Everyone, on the double, back to the shuttle bay! The drones should be moving to put down the coming riots.”

“This is so illegal,” comments the Renegade.

“For a worthless subspecies, your servant is remarkably correct, Serket.”

“One: he's not my servant, he's my squadmate. Two: oh my fuck shut up.”

You lead the charge to the hangar bay, discarding the rifle when it runs low on power and decaptchaing the Butcher into your grip at the first sign of a drone. The weapon comes up and booms, splattering the drone's torso across the floor.

“God, I love this thing.”

“By the Glub, what is that?” the huge indigo asks.

“Handheld railgun.”

“Handheld...” he seems unsteady for a moment, but quickly regains his composure. Ahead, Ron scuttles up to a blastdoor and begins to lay explosives.

“Belay that! Get clear!” you yell. Ron looks at you inquisitively but obeys. Then you wetly slap the brute next you on the shoulder and point at the door. “Charge!”

You swear by your dead lusus the bastard _neighs_ and picks up speed. When Equius Zahhak hits the blast door, he hits it with the force of a runaway freight husktrailer. The thick blast door caves around his frame and both go flying through the doorway in a tumble. There's a shocked silence from the other side before the sounds of energy weapons fire starts up. You and Ron sprint into the room to find Equius crawled under the remains of the blast door, weathering fire from several squads around the shuttle bay.

“Full Purge!”

Those are magic words to the Renegade and the air suddenly gets a lot louder and a lot hotter. The thing about a firefight inside any sort of artificial locale in space is that it is usually limited to small-arms fire to prevent any hull breaches or unnecessary collateral damage. Your entire modus operandi is “unncessary collateral damage.” The fight is hardly fair, and the trolls opposing you figure that out when half a squad dies to a micromissile barrage. They begin to retreat through a blast door on the other side of the bay and most of them make it. That is before Equius stands, picks up his cover and hurls it down-range, slamming it into the hatch, sealing it shut and pasting the remaining trolls in its way. A few cower behind cover like the conscripts they are.

“Right, get our shuttle and let's extract.”

“I dare say, that was quite invigorating. I has been far too long since I was able to test my strength. Though I fear my shoulder might bruise.”

You stare at him incredulously. “Oh boo-hoo you enormous wriggler. Get in the fucking shuttle, if you can even fit.”

* * *

Back on the ship, tensions run slightly high when Equius finds out that he's going to be working for an alien and then simmer down when Rose gives him a taste of the psychic dominance that was enough to terrify an Empress. It runs high again when he makes his one request.

“It is simply too dangerous. Any contact without outside sources is too filled with risk and uncertainty.”

“She is my moirail and I demand to speak with her!” Equius bellows, shaking the room. “I have not spoken with her in _months!_ What if something has happened to her?!”

“Nepeta Leijon is perfectly fine, still serving in Alternian Forces with distinction. In deference to your attachment, I have provided all information regarding her and her status to reassure you. But contact is out of the question.”

“Unacceptable!”

You wince at the crack in his voice at that. You're also wincing at what the big idiot must be going through. He clearly agreed to come with you in the hopes that he'd be reunited with Nep, but that wasn't in the cards.

“Zahhak, you are now engaged in activities that defend the very existence of your Empire and moirail. I suggest taking to heart that your new-found position will see her safer than your previous one ever could.”

Your relationship with your last moirail was... one-sided at best, and apparently clouded to boot, but you understand the need the role fills. You're, at your core, an unstable people. The number of times Kanaya held you close to calm your tendencies is beyond your counting and for someone like Equius, a moirail is basically a public service.

“Lalonde,” you say, cutting into the argument. You open that part of your mind to her, to communicate ideas that you'd absolutely fail at putting into words. Fucking Vantas could give her a several-hours long lecture on quadrants, an hour on moirallegiance alone, but you're not him. Your leadership qualities are leading from the front and being better than all other options, not care, inspiration and a finely-honed critical mind. You feel Rose rummage through your memories for your salient point and then slowly treat them with a defter touch. The memory of Kanaya's hand in your hair replays itself, but the hand is paler, softer. Now it’s Rose's and instead of Kanaya looking down at you, it's the human, looking up at you, violet eyes even larger than normal. Surprised, you shake yourself out of the memory and watch her closely.

She's blushing. Goddammit, now you're blushing too. You boot her out of your mind. This was a terrible idea and you'd wager she agrees, because she lets herself be booted.

“I, ah. Ahem. Upon further review, I will defer to my colleague's greater expertise in xenoromance, but I must insist upon absolute discretion. We will speak at a later date regarding oneirocommunication.”

Then she spins on her heel and leaves the briefing room, dark dress fluttering behind her.

Equius blinks at the sudden change in her position and regards you with suspicion.

“Greater expertise in xenoromance?”

You blush again, recalling the far too intimate touch of Lalonde's mind in yours. “Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to.”

You unfold your arms and head out of the room yourself. “Come on, let's get you to your quarters.”

* * *

“The outer shell is a chitin-ceramic construction stronger than drone armour plating that should let you deflect kinetics and many energy types. The internal myomer musculature is superior in every way to your previous prosthetic and with this you could wrestle a cholerbear into submission.”

“Yeah, but could I beat you in an arm-wrestling competition?”

“Perish the thought, blue-blood. In any case, considering a great many of your missions are not the brutal, haphazard raid that freed me, I have included various tools in the digits of your hand suited to espionage activities such as masterkeys, universal data connectors, cameras and the like. Combined with further sensors in the structure of the arm and upgrades to your eye, you are now less reliant on support for missions that laughably rely on your feeble grasp of stealth.”

“Laugh it up, I do pretty good for a crazy ex-shock trooper.”

“Everything is relative, I suppose. Finally, there is a secondary battery for a high-power emitter which I have yet to decide should be a personal shield or an energy weapon. I leave the choice in your hands, as a gesture of submission and of my standing as your gracious superior.”

“Wow, that's not weird in the least,” you say, looking at the notes that comprise the manual for your arm. It's still half disassembled on Equius' workbench, but he wanted you appraised of what your were getting before finishing up.

 _Your selection will have to wait, Serket._ Equius starts, still unused to Lalonde's preferred means of intraship communication. _Another black box has been located and it is under heavy enemy assault. Briefing will commence in transit._

The ship lurches, its strange faster-than-light technology firing it through the void. Your stomach, too, lurches at her tone. “Is it...?”

_Yes. The horrorterrors may have learned of our objective._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abstract: The Mark 1 was an overcomplicated and underpowered device that nevertheless was an important first step in the design of the Arachnogrip. Models going forward cut the sensors in light of better squad support and changing mission requirements. Of particular interest to this documentation is the wrist-mounted silk harpoon of the Mark 5. Development of the interlacing crystallocarbon ampullate fibres for the silk line munition lead to the exponential improvement of artificial myomer musculature to the strength level now considered standard. Mark 6 included the now-famous [REDACTED] weapon mounting, requiring re-allocation of energy previously intended for the shield and firearm and resulting in their removal. Said removal was only lightly protested by the user, given the properties of [REDACTED]. The Mark 8, ironically enough, was completed but never saw service.


	8. Operation: Light Brigade

“The situation, as of receipt of this distress signal, is dire.” The Seer begins. “I do not expect that it has bettered, as the signal was suppressed and indeed the only reason I recognized it as a distress signal was active surveillance of that planet and extrapolation of what fragments escaped.”

“So Alternian Forces don't know about this.”

“No, I have now contacted Peixes, but it will take time for the message to trickle down to someone who can act upon it. Hence it falls to us to intervene.”

“Correct me if I am wrong,” rumbles Equius, “But this sort of overt action is precisely what you wished to avoid in forming this... unit.”

“Normally you would be completely correct. However, shortly before the distress signal, I received word that another black box had been located on the surface.”

“Right. So that's why you think the enemy might be on to us.”

“Quite. In any case, we are now on route,” Lalonde gestures and the beach turns into a void, with the planet in question rotating before you lot.

“Awwwwwwww, hell no,” you groan. Equius and Ron look at you questioningly while Lalonde smirks in satisfaction.

“Oh yes,” she say, “You'll be returning. Perhaps you can play the knight in shining armour and rescue your much-maligned ex.”

“You don't understand,” you say, holding your head in your hands. “This just got a whoooooooole lot more complicated.”

“Explain.” The Seers eyes narrow.

“Oh no,” you smirk, head coming up. “This has no bearing on the mission. And I reserve the right to be a smug, mysterious bitch this time around. You'll see.”

A ghost of a tendril brushes your mind, but you slam down your barriers, already anticipating her nosiness.

“ _Anyways_ ,” you continue, “What's the situation on the ground?”

“Let us start with the situation in the sky,” Lalonde retorts and the image of the planet zooms in on a rather _large_ ship in orbit around the planet. It looks nothing like the creature you fought in the warehouse, aside from necrotic, fleshy growths spurting out at random intervals along its hull.

“What utter nonsense, using exposed organics on a void-faring vessel,” snorts Equius.

“Logic does not seem to be foremost in their minds, design wise,” Lalonde agrees. “Tactically, though, they seem sound. The ship is in geosynchronous orbit of their target, the Alternian base and dig site here.”

A target appears on the planet, and your view zooms into the atmosphere in disturbingly high definition. You feel slightly dizzy as you seem crash through the atmosphere without re-entry burn, zooming through clouds and come to a floating halt high above the battleground.

“Further intel is limited, but from what information I have been able to glean, survivors from the base and dig site abandoned both and made for the hills, where a secondary outpost had been constructed. I expect that the black box and any survivors might be there.”

“May as well hot-drop into the base, though. If the fighting has shifted, it'll be safer and we might be able to get our hands on something heavier. And who knows, maybe they just straight up abandoned everything, the box included.”

The Seer gives you a flat look.

“What? We could get lucky.”

“Wishful thinking aside,” she continues, “this will be a full combat assault against a numerically superior enemy, so Vriska and the Renegade have permission to fully cut loose. I have no idea how you operate Zahhak, but consider yourself under the same lack of restrictions.

“ _However_ ,” and she gives you and Equius in particular hard looks, “this is primarily a recovery mission. Aiding your fellow trolls is secondary to securing the objectives and extracting.”

“I do not require such castigation, though it is welcome regardless. The weaker bloods can fend for themselves.”

“Yeah, what the pervert said. Mission comes first, you don't gotta tell me twice.”

“Good. Now, in response to concerns voiced by the commander here, I have attempted to address our equipment situation.”

* * *

“They are of human design, so aside from the Renegade, you will have to go helmetless. However, I do believe they will see to most of your needs.”

You're in Equius' arm, in a fabrication shop where the machines are busy slicing raw materials, printing circuitry, forging an endoskeleton and assembling parts. The frame is massive, and clearly intended for the indigo.

“Zahhak's armour will be ready by the time we arrive at the operation zone. The extra size allows for the most internal additions, so when it is done, it will sport a full set of remote engineering tools, a miniature fabricator and a virtual intelligence to handle their operation in tandem with your own work.”

“I shall program it, cherish it and name it Arthour,” proclaims the mountain of mutant muscle solemnly.

“As for armament, your arrival was rather sudden, so I suppose you will have to make do with what is in the armoury.”

“I object!” Everyone starts at Ron's outburst. “I saw what he did to blasters in the field, he can barely control his strength! We'll be out of weapons in a month at the rate he destroys them.”

“While the sub-species needs to learn its place, I concur. Standard armaments do not suffice for me.”

“Yeah, the officious bulge used to be an archeradicator, Lalonde. Probably because their lightbows can't friggin' break. Also probably because they're the only lot as stuck-up as he is in the main forces.”

“I see. Well, we shall have to see about supplying you with such a device. In the mean time...” she hesitates. “I do have an artifact weapon that may be sufficiently sturdy, though its construction was designed to handle _internal_ stresses.”

Eagerly, Zahhak pounces on the opportunity. “Would this be of a kind with Serket's pistol? Another portable rail weapon?”

“They're not- ugh. But yes. Quite appropriate to this group, considering it used to be named after a particularly lethal spider.”

“Badass. Sure, give it to him.” You grin and turn to the other troll. In ridiculous, somber tones, you declare, “I hereby grant you my symbol and thereby bind you to my service forever more. Your first task shall be to get me a beer.”

For an overly polite high-blood, Equius can manage some fairly obscene gestures. Before he can apologize for displaying them, Lalonde powers through.

“Aimless Renegade, your needs are much simpler and easier to address.” Gesturing at the tiny black armour, displayed on a small stand, she elaborates, “Good armour, good mobility and a portable reactor with a variable charging element to attach to most known energy weapons.”

The little carapace looks up at her like gristmas had come early and it was actually allowed to participate. While the ship had provided carapace-sized clothing quickly enough, it was all fairly drab, albeit it better than the rags he'd arrived in. That clothing was quickly discarded as the little lunatic fairly well leapt into the provided armour. Equius and Rose look away in embarrassment, but you don't see the point. The little dudes don't even have genitalia, what the hell's the point? While you're glad he's enjoying the equipment you hope he can be parted from it later. You've smelled folks who have been in armour too long and its enough to gag on.

“Serket, your armour has actually been in design and production off and on since you joined. Originally I was aiming for something to offset your nearly inadequate stealth, but given your predilection for recklessly charging into any situation, the design changed radically halfway through.”

Storage compartment on the wall hisses open and extrudes a sleek and insectile piece of kit. You already like this thing.

“Virtually all the actual ablative armour is front-facing, to better suit your assault mentality and to save weight. That also accounts for the lack of a left arm. The rest is treated myomer cabling and muscles, to better amplify and accomodate those ludicrous lunges and leaps you're so fond of. Sound bafflers are located at most joints, so your movement will be almost completely silent.

“And finally,” she gestures, psychic sparks flitting from her temples. The armour vanishes, or seems to. You can make out a vague distortion in the air where it was. “Visual camouflage.”

“Holy shit,” you mutter, working your dropped jaw.

“The field is imperfect, exacerbated by the need to cover your unarmoured arm, but it does its job. More sophisticated sensors and active scanning will pick you up, but you will fool most sentient species and basic security systems with this. Do try not to destroy it, or get killed despite it.”

While you reach out hesitantly to touch the matte surface, Rose faces the group.

“Now, see to your preparations. I want that box.”

* * *

You had a pretty high opinion of troll combat doctrines and technologies, suited to bringing the fight to the enemy before crushing them utterly. A lot of them were brutal, practical things, uncompromising and even slightly insane in some regards. But they have nothing on this human device.

Orbital drop cages, she called them.

Your ship was unable to get close, even with its stealth systems, to the Alternian base, approached the planet from an angle and got as close to the atmosphere as possible without causing a disruption that the enemy vessel could detect. And then it fired three shots from broadside launchers. Those three shots were compact containers, virtual corpseboxes, that held you three agents.

Your mission insertion consisted of you being shot at the surface from close orbit.

You wonder how a race this hardcore, this _insane_ ever lost to whatever it is you're fighting, and how your species is supposed to survive.

* * *

The deceleration is an organ-crushing, thinkpan-rattling, painful affair, but the three of you stumble from the cages as their remains undergo some kind of molecular deconstruction that leave no trace of them. There wasn't a whole lot left after the shocking strain of the deceleration and the _orbital re-entry_ that burned away the outer shell _leaving you exposed and in free-fall_.

Utterly insane.

“Right, orient on me, do a quick sweep of the base. Your sensors should be primed to watch for the shape and limited signatures of the boxes. Meet at the vehicle pool in ten.”

The three of you split up and search the base. You make a beeline for the quarters the last objective had been located in. Finding them completely ransacked and empty, you swear and complete your sweep, kicking down doors and doing ransacking of your own. Fruitless. When you get to the vehicle pool, you almost have to reconsider your transport plan. Smoking, overturned wrecks fill the place and there's heavy evidence of fighting. There are a few craters that you remember from the dustbowl you picked the carapaces up on, and you're glad your people took a few of them out.

Then there's a shrieking metallic groan from the other side of the garage and an Armoured Personnel Assault Husk rolls over to the proper orientation. Zahhak emerges from behind it, dusting his hands off.

“Damages appear to be more external and superficial. Give me a short period to ensure its operational worthiness and we can be on our way.”

You give the indigo a curt nod and set up an overwatch position. As soon as Ron trots into the garage, you set him up in the same and go invisible to make patrols of your makeshift perimeter. Then Zahhak's affirmative comes over the comms and the three of you pile into the APAH. Equius can barely fit in the troop compartment, so it is on you to drive, while the Renegade mans the automated defenses beside you. While you gun the motivators and go scuttling off towards the hills, he swears repeatedly as defensive systems report as destroyed or disabled.

“What have we got, Ron?”

“Apparently, the quad-laser.”

“That's it?”

“That's it.”

“This is a top-of-the-line assault veh- you know what, no. Just... just deal with it.”

“Any further repairs to the vehicle would have significantly set back our mission timetable,” comes a voice from the troop compartment.

“Nobody's blaming you, Zahhak.”

“Fiddlesticks.”

You are proud of the way you don't bang your unarmoured head off your steering wheel and stay on track for the hills. Presently, Ron pipes up again.

“We have firearms discharge on sensors,”

“Hold your fire until we're closer, we need every bit of surprise we can muster.”

You coax what extra speed you can out of the APAH, and when you can finally see the discharge of plasma and other energy weapons, you yell, “Brace for combat maneuvers!” and plow through the rear lines.

Strange metal and viscous flesh splatter and clang off the husk of your vehicle as you hit them without slowing down. Your speed is armour enough against most of their return fire and the APAH's husk sufficient for the rest. The legs spear through more bodies and when Ron opens up with the quad, your path clears even more.

“Cancel that targeting, prioritize heavy weapons!” you bark at him.

“Well, excuse me, I figured a clear path would be good...”

“DO I LOOK LIKE I NEED A CLEAR PATH?!” you whoop exultantly as you swing the backend of the APAH into a cluster of the warped constructs. The Renengade takes your point and focuses on blowing up anything with a bigger gun.

At some point during your manic, poorly controlled charge up the hill a hole gets blasted in the side of your transport. When you call back to check on your tech specialist, the only response you get is an auricular sponge-trembling _BOOM_ , following by disbelieving, rumbling laughter.

Ron says something and you have to yell, “WHAT?”

“I SAID, 'WHAT ARE OUR CHANCES OF STICKING HIM THROUGH THE TOP HATCH?'”

“I DON'T THINK HE'D GET HIS NECK THROUGH, LET ALONE HIS SHOULDERS.”

Plasma continues to melt minor sections of your hull off and your advance continues apace in a blaze of red laser and madly scuttling husk. But their firepower is much greater than yours, and eventually the minor burns get through to the APAH's motive functions and the compartments begin to fill with smoke. You're going to start slowing down right quick, but you're close enough to the top.

“ZAHHAK! I want some disruption grenades ready for deployment within a minute. Get on that!”

“Do not presume to order me around!” he returns, confirming that they'll be ready.

“Greeeeaaaat,” you mutter and glance at the sensors. Time to plot where you're going to ditch this thing. Grenades will buy you some time in this crowd, so long as you have a clear destination. Suddenly a larger ping resolves and a plan snaps into place.

“'Nades on my mark, then bail on a three count!” you yell, angling for the larger enemy, so similar to the hunter you took on. It turns to you, plasma cannons aiming for the driving compartment and you almost panic. “Mark!”

The next three seconds are interminable. You can see the cannons' barrels light with their charge. The obscene, twisted musculature of the thing bracing for its firing sequence. When your internal timer reaches three, the molten balls of death are leaving the barrels, you're throwing the hatch open and your world detonates into white.

* * *

Your systems are apparently less suited to filtering disruption effects than Ron's and Equiius', so they had to evac you from the ruin of the APAH, firing all the while. When you can see and communicate to an understandable degree, you decaptcha the heavy assault rifle the carapace had picked out for you.

“Right, make for the caves, target protocols... _Full Purge_ ,” you growl and open up with the blaster. Behind you the wreck of the APAH burns prettily, the nose of it run straight through the plasma-cannon wielding thing.

The advantage of your surprise is short-lived, but the three of you make good use of it, charging the last paces up the slope in a barrage of energy, leaving nothing in your wake. The slope ends at the mouth of a cave where a few trolls have erected a barricade and are manning it pitifully. Your malformed enemy are taking losses but advancing steadily and as the rear few turn to deal with you, you charge them, leaping in. Your already-powerful legs get a boost from the armour so your landing in the midst of the enemy is a surprise to everyone, including yourself. But then the rifle is discarded, the Butcher comes out and your sword lays in all around you.

By the time Zahhak and the carapace finish mopping up the remaining rearguard, you're covered in gore and laughing. Black ichor runs down your face and your sword has been chinked from hewing through that abominable metal too often. Your mad cackling is punctuated every so often by the executioner's bark of your pistol, ending the twitching of a hunchbacked corpse, and causing it to dematerialize, leaving only a vague impression in the soil. The strange markings on that dustbowl start to make sense, and the scale of that battle starts to take shape in your mind.

Ron eventually nudges you none-too-gently in the side and nods at the barricade. Open-mouthed trolls are staring at you, weapons held loosely in their hands and pointed at the floor. You frown and snarl,

“What the hell are you lot doing? Weapons up! Another wave will be here in a second, you wanna end up dead?”

You storm up to the barricade and hop it, jamming one trolls weapon into his shoulder.

“If you were a conscript under me, I swear to- whaagh!”

The punch comes out of nowhere and staggers you one, two three steps to the right. It's a meaty thing, and you can feel your jaw nearly unhinged from the force of it. Straightening up, you face your attacker.

“Well, I was gonna ask who's in charge here, Megido, but I'm gonna assume that's you.”

“Fuck you, Serket! Don't think I don't know this is all your fucking fault! Coming down here and, and-”

“Hey, watch it! I'm trying to _stop_ these things. It's not my fault they decided to come after you, and it's not my fault you keep digging up fucking artefacts that should stay buried!”

“I knew it, I fucking _knew_ it. Of course you didn't fucking come back for me, of course you weren't here for me in the first fucking place! You are the _worst_ Vriska Serket!”

“Yeah, well,” you're not sure what you could say to make this worse, but you go ahead and say it anyway. “Did the box make it out?”

Aradia gives a screech and swings at you again, but is stopped cold by a single finger in the crook of her arm. She looks up incredulously at the indigo-blood and then back at you.

“And you brought _him_? What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?!”

“I also brought a fucking carapace, I _might_ be short on trollpower here!”

“You're short on something, let me tell you that!”

“Hey!” yells a higher-than-normal voice. The Renegade is gesturing at the slope. “Can you all save your weird mating rituals for after we get through this mess?”

Then he takes a place beside a troll at the barricade and decaptchas an autoblaster bigger than both of them, bracing it on the makeshift structure. You're pretty sure he just doubled your firepower with that.

“Hell, Ron, share, why don't you?” you say, gesturing at the trolls who are now clearly suffering from an inadequacy complex. He looks at you, scandalized, before acquiescing. You turn back to Aradia.

“Look, Megido, I only have instructions to get the black box out. Now, I'm not going to threaten you with that, but my employer is gonna send a shuttle _right frigging quick_ if I can produce that.”

She's still livid with you, but she yanks her arm back from Equius and stomps over to a stack of crates and pops one of the plastohusks open.

“We recovered it a week back. Last night, I... did something and this projection of stars burst out and that's when I knew we had something special-”

_Shuttle inbound now. Get that thing OUT of there, Vriska!_

“You got it, boss.”

Aradia looks at you with irritation but you walk over and shut the husk. “Shuttle's on its way. Should be room enough for all, even if its a squeeze. Worst case we make Equius ride on the roof.”

“You wouldn't dare.”

“No, I'd probably shove you into the torpedo bay.”

That's when the newly installed autoblasters open up and the hunchbacked things make their second assault. You take up a position prowling behind the blasters, waiting to leap in if one of the things gets too close, but they were expecting their previous levels of resistance, not four fully automatic, high-powered gatling blasters.

Then the rail-rifle booms again and a larger hunch pops messily.

“Alright, get ready, they're sending the bigger ones in! This is where it gets tough, writhemaggots!”

You limber up, and are getting ready to leap into the fray when the ground shakes as multiple impacts before your line shake the caves. Coloured versions of the twisted creature unfold from the crater and begin to hose your barricade with liquid fire and acid.

“Oh, hell. They're orbital dropping too.”

The conscripted trolls back away from the burning barricade, abandoning their weapons, which results in a sudden surge of attackers towards them. You swear and aim the pistol. Then the temperature in the area suddenly drops and an eerie, howling wind blows out from the caves. You look over your shoulder and then do a double take.

Megido is floating, hung over limply backwards. Strange shapes flicker all about her, briefly resolving into pained faces, screaming jaws and other ghosts before rushing out over the barricades in a sudden gust of wind.

“Psychic support,” you say with satisfaction. “Finally.”

_What am I, chopped liver?_

“Not here.”

 _Touche_.

A stronger gust blasts at the barricades, blowing the fires out and spraying the liquid acid back into the lines of hunchbacks.

“Ha! Suck it, you alien bulgetwists! Trolls, get back on the guns, those that still work.”

As your tiny force closes with the heavy weaponry, everything goes to hell. A larger series of smaller impacts sends a tremble through the ground. But instead of the methodical unlimbering of the previous batch, these models spring up and rush you, insanely fast.

_Oh no. Those are what they sent after Dave._

“What? Fantastic.”

 _I... Vriska, I can't... there's nothing more I can..._ The voice in your head is tinged with panic, fear.

“It's cool, Lalonde.”

And then you don't have time for anything else because they're on you, three of them. You have to rip one off while punching the other with the carnifex, pulling the trigger point blank and blowing it to pieces. You kick the head of the last clean off as it charges you, razor-sharp limbs outstretched. Looking up, the others aren't faring so well. A dot in the distance looks like it could be your shuttle, but at the rate these things work, it's not going to get here in time. More hunchbacks file onto the top of the slope, firing over the barricades.

A howl echoes from the caves and a rush of white spirits blasts past you, past the obscenely fast little ones who dig their claws into the ground to brace themselves, and into the barricade. They send the ruined structures tumbling outward, crushing opponents on their tumbling path over the edge.

But the little melee dudes are still in your midst. One manages latch onto your front and claw your face nearly clean off and you're lucky you didn't lose another eye from that. In response you headbutt it so hard, it tears a chunk of your front armour off as it tumbles back. Mid tumble you lash out with a kick and send it over the edge. You go to help Equius who is laying into everything around him with his fists, crumpling and pulping the miniature assaulters. Then one latches onto your back and you scream in pain as its talons sink through the myomer cabling and into your flesh.

“Hit the deck!” yells Ron at the same time you vault backwards, trying to crush the thing under your weight, or at least loosen its grasp. An unfamiliar crackling sound resonates through the cave and then the air is filled with countless tiny explosions. Airbursting munitions, you identify dazedly. Did he just seriously detonate airbursters point blank?

You roll over and grab your attacker by a still twitching leg and smash it in a mighty overhand swing against the wall. As it dematerializes, you take stock of your losses. Equius didn't duck in time, and huge, seeping wounds show through his armour, but he's still standing. None of the other trolls are standing, run through too many times by tiny talons. And Aradia...

Megido is still floating in the air, slack, with a semi-circle of untouched soil around her. Belatedly, you realize you're covered in a fine film of soot from the airburst explosion. You appear to have a moment before another wave hits, and the shuttle is nearing.

“Zahhak, grab the husk with the blackbox. Ron, cover him.” You turned to the floating psychic. “Oi, Megido. You there?”

When there's no answer, you grab her by the waist and sling her over your shoulder, at which point whatever spirit was holding her up decides she's your problem now and dumps her weight on you. You grunt, but still carry her with ease. You move out of the cave behind Equius and Ron, who are firing down the slope, Ron with high explosive rockets and Equius one-handing the enormous sniper rifle. The grip looks utterly ruined and it takes you a second to realize tiny tools from his gauntlet are manipulating the interior of the rifle.

Then there's a flash in the distance and the whole hillside rocks, the slope vanishing in fire and dust. The shuttle fires again, and again before pulling up beside your group. Ron and Equius hop in, the latter gently taking Aradia from you while you clamber in. The shuttle is moving before you're even settled and you barely have time to flip off the masses of aliens beneath you.

* * *

Quiet waves splash against the imaginary shore and for once you're not even bothering trying to play it cool. You splay yourself out on the beach, resplendent in bandages, boxers and not a whole lot else. The sand is cool against your back and the light is warm on your aching skin.

“Well, it was damaged beyond repair in your firefight, but it has given up the least corrupted data so far. I dare say something of a picture is starting to come together.”

You raise your arm into a straight vertical line and lazily give Lalonde a thumbs-up.

“I will leave your evaluation as a combat unit to Serket, but from my perspective, you have carried out your mission objective more than adequately.”

“Evaluation? Sure. Ron: Give us a better warning when you detonate explosives in our faces. Zahhak: break less ancient, irreplaceable equipment. Megido: punch me less. Evaluation: done.”

“I'm not part of your unit, Serket.”

You crane your neck up to take in the larger rust-blood, raising your eyebrow. “I just inducted you into a secret war against beings from outside time and space that we're fighting by recovering artefacts of a dozen-millennia dead race at the direction of a mythical creature from wriggler-tales. Are you seriously telling me you're going to bail on this?”

Her nostrils flare and her nails bite into her bicep, but she stays quiet. You let your head drop back onto the imaginary sand.

“She will not be leaving, I forbid it,” rumbles Zahhak from a beach chair. He's in an almost full-body cast from the damage inflicted by the airburster, but he'll be alright within the week.

“Shut up, offalbrains,” growls Megido.

“Yes, ma'am.”

You can almost hear Lalonde's eyebrow creak upwards. Finally Megido speaks up again.

“I'm still finding it hard to believe you're actually a human. I mean... there's no evidence for your existence. I mean, outside of you being here. And in my head. And...”

“That is as it should be. We have gone to great lengths to hide our presence from the universe at large, given what our end was like and what our previous interferences wrought.”

“But... someone must have found something.”

“Indeed. You knew her as the Condesce. She discovered certain things, brutally suppressed knowledge of their existence and began to work in secret. This convinced me she could be trusted with certain aspects of what was happening in the wider universe.”

The beach is still, save for the sound of waves.

“Holy crap,” mutters Aradia as she sits heavily. “So... what, is this where you tell us our history is all a lie, that your people engineered us or...”

“No, those eras are past. Though your people show significant signs of advanced evolutionary traits often displayed by uplifted species, it was not our doing if, in fact, this happened. After past disasters, we no longer try to play God. Most of my people are too content to... hide.”

“Eras? Past disasters?” Aradia's in full academic mode, you can tell. She's found a motherlode of information and she will mine that shit all day. You are half-ways ready to just take a nap, but this could be vaguely interesting, you think. Maybe.

“Hmm, yes, I suppose I should be giving you all some background, now that we are this advanced and escalated. Very well. My people, humanity, once co-existed with a...”

Shortly, you fall asleep.

* * *

“You can wake up now,” a voice addresses you.

You start, jolting upright in a move that sends licks of pain down your back and lets you know that you are not even remotely healed up.

“Easy, now. You are not in some combat zone, this is the ship.”

“Right. The ship with a beach in it.”

Lalonde gives a small smile. “Yes. Perfectly safe, I assure you.”

She's sat next to you, her dress folded up under her legs, looking out over the ocean as well. Violet eyes take in the bright and pastel landscape on which you two stand out like sore thumbs.

“I gotta ask, this whole thing,” you gesture at the everything around you, “Is this you or some computer thing?”

“You believe that I am so powerful that I can conjure such a vista and display it for all to see?”

You stare at her uncertainly, not sure if that was rhetorical or not.

“Ha. Perhaps I am. But no, then I'd have to think about this is great detail, with all of my focus. This is but a holo-simulation, for my entertainment. And so I don't go insane over long periods alone.”

“Well, you're not alone anymore,” and you have no idea why you'd say that. Lalonde looks at you strangely, but you keep your eyes focused forwards resolutely.

“Indeed. Quite the crew you are assembling.”

“Yeah, well, I needed some tools other than me to get this job done,” you joke.

“Aradia and Equius... is there something between them?”

“Oh hell. Yeah. Them's the issue I was talking about before.”

“Is this an aspect of your overcomplicated troll romance?”

“It's not over-complicated, it's perfectly fucking natural, thank you very much.”

“Then what are they?”

“Uuuuugh. Equius is flushed for Aradia but he's a haemocastist taintscar and completely fucking botched his courtship. It briefly amused and then massively irritated Aradia, so she's black for him if anything.”

“But you two were kismeses...”

“Yeah, because I hated her too and it just clicked. Equius needs to get over his haemo-nonsense if anything's ever going to work between them and moreover they probably need an auspitice on top of that.”

“Auspitice is the... grey quadrant?”

“Ashen, yeah.” You're getting a sinking feeling now. “Why the sudden interest, Lalonde? You trying to set me up here?”

Another indecipherable look from the human. You wish you were better at reading alien expressions, but that looks like its going to be a lost cause for the foreseeable future.

“Of course not. Who in their right minds would want you as an auspitice?”

You snort. “Too damn right.”

The Seer seems content to leave it at that, staring out over the ocean. For a holographic projection, it is incredibly high fidelity, so you let yourself lie back and enjoy the “sun” on your skin a while longer.

* * *

When next you wake up, the only side of Rose is an impression in the sand beside you, stretched out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the Journal of Rose Lalonde
> 
>  
> 
> I have lived for over four hundred years. I have seen stars die, ridden their solar winds to the ends of the galaxy, soared over icy mountains to scour a comet for what it is I seek. I am one of the most powerful psychics in the entire galaxy, if not the most powerful. My mind is a finely honed tool of analysis, construction and dissembly.
> 
>  
> 
> For all that, or perhaps because of it, I am still _fucking terrible_ at romance.


	9. Operations: Various, N/A

You try to be responsible and look where that gets you. Wrist deep in cans. With a “c” not a “k”, get your mind out of the gutter, holy crap.

“What the hell is all this?” you say, getting off your knees in the pile of ration cans that litter the floor. Well, litter the floor now. Previously, they were apparently some kind of mini structure, before you came barging in like the hornbeast you are. You just wanted to go over requisitions with Ron, you swear.

“Now you've done it,” he says from behind you. Dark as this room is, he's outlined in the doorway, a vaguely menacing shape, arms crossed, scowl scrunching his face.

“What? What'd I do?”

“Destruction of public property, is what, Mayor? A life sentence?”

Your head whips between the Renegade and the Mayor. “What?”

“Oh all right, we can commute her sentence to community service. Vriska Serket, by the power invested in me by the Mayor of Can, sorry, _New_ Can Town, I sentence you to community service until you repair the havoc you have wrought upon the citizens of this fine city.”

“What?”

* * *

Shipboard life is weird.

* * *

“You cannot continue to bar me from these scientific pursuits! I command you to allow me access, subspecies!”

“One:” responds Lalonde icily, “My species pre-dates yours by eighty thousand years. We were creating and fighting AI before you _worms_ learned how to bang two rocks together to make fire.

“Two: I will continue to restrict your access to the _single most destructive artificial life form_ in living memory _because_ we were fighting AI before you lot.”

“This intelligence could be a useful weapon in our war against these constructs! Why deny us its power?”

“Because that's what we thought. And then it killed my ectosibling along with an entire shrouded world to make a point.”

Silence. You slide the sunglasses from your nose and watch from your position on an imaginary rock, meters away. Once the big indigo got word of there being an actual, honest-to-lusii artificial intelligence on board, not just an advanced virtual, he began badgering Lalonde for access. Personally, you were willing to take a species that's survived this long by suppressing AI at its word. Zahhak, on the other hand, just changes tacks.

“So you, who are so invested in your species survival, would consign the only member of another to eternal solitude?”

Oh boy.

The Seer's eyes flash and in the distance a bright cloud turns to grey. Thunder peals and the rain of light turns dark and oil drips, marring the ocean with silky, inky darkness. Part of you goes “Ew” and another watches in fascination. You're not sure if you believe Lalonde's line about this all being computer-generated.

“For your information, my species’ survival is a wash at this juncture, it is impossible. And yes, I will sentence another life form to _life imprisonment_ for the murder of thousands, happily. I furthermore forbid any further inquiry into this matter and suggest you step. Lightly.”

The indigo doubles up and flies through thin air, passing through an invisible barrier to be booted out of the room. A shower of sparks twinkle down Rose's shoulders at the overt manifestation of her powers and she glares at you, as if noticing you for the first time. As if you hadn't sauntered in here an hour ago, armless and stripped down to your unmentionables for some sun. You raise an eyebrow and she visibly composes herself, goes back to her work.

* * *

But you're not going to complain.

* * *

“There appears to be a ship following us,” reports Equius one day.

Lalonde's head snaps up at that. “Impossible.”

“The same signature has been spotted four out of our past twelve systems, shortly after we left.”

Lalonde snatches the report from the indigo, causing him to break out into a sweat and colour. She scans the document.

“How could I have missed this?”

“It appears to be a small vessel, not attempting to be particularly stealthy or covert. Going back along our trajectory, I discovered at least one case where it asked after a ship matching this one's description.”

Lalonde conjures a stylus with a spin of her fingers and goes to work on her own light screen. After a moment and dozens of screens, she swears.

“You're right. Hells, how did this happen?”

“I do not know. I double checked all of our systems. None are malfunctioning. This points to more advanced technology. Additionally,” he picks up the tablet and fiddles with it, “it appears to be using gates as well.”

There is a sound like the end of the world and the chair you were lounging on disappears out from under you. You land on your bony ass with a grunt in time to see the Seer stalking out of the room, dark colour beginning to taint her cheeks. You scramble to your feet, claws scratching on the suddenly cold steel and follow her.

“Computer, maintain stealth, but bring online sufficient powerplants to enable battlestations. Rar all databanks, encrypt via Aleph-twin and send to agent Alternian One. Have the code to Aleph-twin encryption be delivered within twenty-four hours via any sleeper near the agent. Then bring us around, slowly.”

Lalonde brings you all to an unfamiliar part of the ship, a tiny room deep in its guts. Its armoured, heavily and there's room for only a few people. Equius takes up multiples of that space, and it's only due to his ever-present sweat that you're able to squeeze past, disgustingly.

It's a long, tense wait, hidden in the shadow of the massive, alien gate. You're questioning your decision making here, given that Zahhak's report gives the following craft's progress on your trail anywhere from eight hours to several days. As you begin to move for the door, thinking about maybe suggesting shifts in here, the strange female voice speaks, drawing a twitch from Rose.

“Contact. Prepare for FTL receipt near this location.”

“Give us visual,” commands Equius, drawing a scowl from Rose. The gate glows, spinning its arcane wheels at speed, and slowly grinding to a halt, just before the bolt of off-blue seems to appear from nowhere and another craft appears in local space.

“Zoom.”

It's a tiny thing, comparatively. It is smaller than a single arm of this ship, though wider. Definitely a single-occupant craft, maybe room for two, if they're intimate. Pure white, with a vaguely chitinous exterior, it looks utilitarian, but not without a sense of grace, of purpose, like some ancient marine arthropod.

“Identification?”

The computer is silent.

“Anyone?”

The lot of you are silent.

“Aradia might know?” you venture.

After a sequence of commands locating Aradia and the carapaces, Rose transmits the image to them. While Aradia shakes her head, the change that comes over the Aimless Renegade is visible.

“Ron, report.”

Instead, he bolts, dragging a confused mayor behind him.

“Ron!” you yell over the comms, “What the hell, man?”

“That's a Prospitian ship. I'm securing the Mayor and prepping for assault. I suggest you do the same.”

“Dude. That's carrying maybe one person.”

“Ship commencing active scanning of local space and beyond,” the computer voice notes.

“How's our stealth?”

“Minimal risk of detection, the relay blocks most scans.”

“Ron, what the hell is a Prospitian?”

It's Aradia who answers, irritatingly enough. “Before contact with the Alternian Empire, carapaces fought a brutal racial war amongst themselves, based off apparent differences in chitin colour. There was also an possible geospatial issue in that the two colours, white and black had either successfully segregated themselves to two separate planetoids or somehow evolved independently. The physical record is not clear, as the first planet, Prospit, is now a fucking asteroid ring around the star Skaia, while all that is left of carapacian civilization is the second planet, Derse. Which has understandably specious secondary sources.”

You blink.

“Ron? Any of this ringing a bell.”

There's a silence on the other end of the line, until the the sound of a captchlogue closing crackles. “The stories say we blew the enemy to kingdom come in reparation for the crimes they committed against us.”

“Your people managed to _destroy an entire planet_?”

“The people you trolls faced were a more peaceful sort, content with their place in the universe. This happened a long time ago.”

“Jeez,” you say. Idly, you wonder what it would have been like to fight an entire civilization of people like Ron. You get a spare tingle of thrill from the idea. Then,

“Ship is broadcasting a signal. Shall I decode?”

“Please do, computer,” speaks the Seer. There is a pause and then,

“Letter for Rose Lalonde from Jade Harley. Letter for Rose Lalonde from Jade Harley. Please respond within eight standard hours or this ship will move on.”

Silence reigns in the ship. In the enclosed, now somewhat smelly compartment, you could hear a pin drop.

“Soooooooo...” you venture, “you gonna answer that?”

* * *

The hatch hisses open and your grip on the Renegade's shoulder tightens. The Seer gave you explicit instructions to make sure that this didn't devolve into a firefight. And while Ron showed every sign of understanding that this Prospitian was a guest and not to be harmed, he still showed up armed. Which meant that you were playing handler. For once. Funny how these things work out.

Rose Lalonde stands before the opening hatch, meters distant from anything that might be an escort and no less lethal for any of that. This Prospitian ship is on her grounds and any threat that might surface will find itself resolutely opposed from any given quarter. Many of those quarters are heavily armed. Rose Lalonde's quarter does not count itself among those and it is arguably the most dangerous.

A plain ramp extends and a long, chitinous leg takes the first step. A second reveals a taller carapace, virtually identical to the other two you know personally, aside from colouration. It wears bright colours and a tall hat, with some officious medals pinned to its chest. The only weaponry it wields is a short, wickedly curved and barbed sword. You know the moment Ron sees that weapon because you can almost feel his panic. Your grip tightens further, and you sore miss your Vision Eightfold.

He stays calm, as calm as he can be, you guess, as the white carapace descends its ramp and comes to a stop before Lalonde. It executes some kind of bow that involves pinching its strange skirt-pants to either side. You register a brief moment of surprise on Rose's face before she copies the gesture. Somehow it looks more natural, more fluid coming from a human frame. It is, or might be, human in origin, you decide.

In a quiet, chittering voice, it asks, “Rose Lalonde, I presume?”

“Indeed. Do I need to present identification.”

A soft titter, what you take as a polite laugh. “No, according to Miss Harley, there is only one other being in the galaxy who could match this description.”

“Ah, but I could be some manner of imposter, imposing a vision upon you to deceive you.”

“I wasn't talking about a physical description, Miss Lalonde,” the carapace says kindly, cocking its head at an angle best described as awkward. “How do you suppose Jade Harley would describe her friends?”

Your Seer freezes a moment. Then,

“Please, allow me to show you some hospitality, Miss...?”

“Postal Mistress, ma'am.” You hear your carapace gasp. “But Miss Harley called me... Paisley.”

“Well, you will have to tell me which you prefer. This way, if you please.”

Lalonde and the Prospitian disappear into the ship after that, and you're left holding a mildly panicking Dersite.

* * *

“That sword, you noticed its colour?”

“Yeah, pitch black. I assume that means it was one of yours?”

“Yes. No. Wait. I... I'm not sure. As far as I know, that was a regisword.”

“A regisword.”

“Yes.”

“The hell is that?”

“Basically, it's a weapon for our royalty. What was our royalty, before the Black King bowed before the Black Empress. What it does is... kill, no, destroy Dersites.”

“...Swords do that, yeah.”

“No, no, not like this. You stab someone with a sword, they could survive, yeah?”

“Depending on where you stab them, maybe?”

“Yeah, well, if you stabbed a Dersite with a Black Regisword, in their fucking little toe, they would die.”

“Huh.”

“Painfully. Look, you trolls have this high opinion of your psychery, and that's all well and good. But we Der- carapaces... we've got our own psychics. And they're not as showy, but they _work_ okay? No one can wield a regisword that doesn't have permission. You get me? That Postal Mistress, which is terrifying enough _on its own_ , somehow has permission to kill Dersites. A _Black Queen_ gave her that.”

“Wait, what's so terrifying about a post person?”

“You haven't heard the stories. You don't know. You don't know what they went through. They are fucking _unstoppable_ at their jobs.”

“What, delivering mail?” You laugh.

“Yes. But think, _intelligence_.”

That gives you pause, and you think about what might be going on in a holographic room, half a ship away. Eventually the ghost of a voice whispers through your mind though.

_Please be prepared to show the Mistress to an arm. She will be joining us, briefly._

_Uhhhhhhhh… not sure that’s the best idea Lalonde._ You recall the conversation for her.

_I assume that the Renegade is sufficiently disciplined that he can be trusted to behave appropriately._

_Sure thing, just sayin’, you’re heaping trouble on trouble here Rose._

A bitter laugh echoes in your mind, and she ends the connection. You frown and stand. Ron begins to follow you and you hold up your hand. 

“Do me a favour, stay here for a while, while we get the Prospitian settled.”

His eyes widen, and he looks like he might protest, but you shake your head. “It’ll only be a for a few days, I think.”

“You think,” he mutters and goes back to re-assembling a weapon. Yeeeeaaaap. This is a terrible idea. 

When you leave, you thumb on your communicator. “Megido, I need you at the briefing room. Show the Prospitian around, get her settled in an arm. Just for a few days, so don’t make the permissions permanent or anything.”

The Postal Mistress is waiting patiently outside the room and the pair of you exchange professional nods when you breeze past her into the waiting dark. You knew it. You wait for your eyes to adjust to the gloom and cock your ears forward, straining for a hint of sound. Nothing, but the shallow breathing of a small alien.

You move towards her, and manage make out something in the distance. A tiny, flickering thing, like a lone star in the dark. But you turn your attention back to the human. She’s not crying, at least. You are not sure how you would have dealt with that. But she’s staring out at the dim light, a sullen look on her face. At least you think its sullen. You’re bad at this.

“What’s with the dark, Lalonde? You holding out some night vision abilities on me?”

Silence, then, “This is furthest image of our galaxy ever taken. An ancient probe, sent into the vastness of the Deep Void took it and transmitted it back. It was its last transmission.”

She sighs, swallows. “This is where my sister is. No, not even here. Here, I could maybe reach her.

“She is gone. Gone where I can’t follow, where none can follow. And now I am all that’s left. The last human, fighting.”

She rubs at her eye with the heel of her hand. “Goddammit Jade, we could still win. You are not Noah, and you have no ark.”

You have no idea what to say to that, so you just stand by her. Eventually your hand finds her shoulder. Her cheek rests on it. At some point, the light goes out.

* * *

Shipmates are so much fun.

* * *

“How the hell,” you growl, rising from the slime of the recuperacoon, “are they making enough noise to get through solid metal, AND THE VOID OF SPACE?!”

Seriously, even dunking yourself under and hoping that you grew gills or embraced the sweet, sweet release of suffocation wasn’t enough. You have just about had it. You drag your lanky carcass to the ablution block, hose yourself off real quick and then storm out of your quarters, barely having the decency to wrap a moisturesponge around yourself. 

You get to the armoury, choose the biggest, loudest, flashiest gun in the entire stock and storm off to another arm. You’re just about ready to fire the damn thing one-handed when a voice interrupts you.

“I do hope that you weren’t planning on firing that thing outside of a shielded range.”

You turn, and a bleary, cross-armed human is staring at you. Her hair is a tousled mess, she looks like she has been dragged under a public husk transport and she is completely devoid of facial markings. You are getting mighty uncomfortable at this different, berobed Lalonde.

“Yeah, well, someone’s got to shut them up,” you growl, gesturing at the arm where Aradia and Equius’ latest quadrant flip was doing who-knows-what to the hull.

“There are subtler methods of ensuring one’s sleep,” she says and looks up at the ceiling. “Computer, disable gravity in the arm ahead of us.”

The sounds of whatever they’re doing stop after a pair of surprised cries. And then, incredibly, it sounds like they might start up again.

“Gravity to five hundred percent.”

The deck _vibrates_ with their impact.

“Reverse.”

Again.

“Repeat.”

You stare at the tiny bipdeal witch beside you in some unholy mix of amusement, fear and want.

“This,” you say slowly, “is subtler _how_ , exactly?”

* * *

Shipmate’s are _so_ fun.

* * *

The stars are out in a cloudless night sky and the city gleams in chitinous glory the way only troll cities can, the dim lights reflecting off hives, amplifying ambient light. “Another, ma’am?”

You wave at the low-blood, not even bothering to look at them. You’re so good at playing this role. You’re the best. Rich and idle blue-blood with no cares in the world? You wish you could play this more often. The service you get is even better than you’d normally get, even if you have to wear this ridiculous... fashion.

You wonder, briefly, if Kanaya would approve.

“You gonna slow down with those at all, Commander?”

The Aimless Renegade, on the other hand, is a little bit less adept at his role.

“It’s ‘Mistress,’ for the last time,” you say, making your best scowl as you knock back another grub concoction. Whatever this shit is, it’s alcoholic and it’s _good_. “The wench will be back when she is back and I will spend my idle time how I please.”

“Yes... Mistress.” The carapace is less than happy with his role, but this is Alternia Itself. Peixes’ reforms are slow to take old in the ancient capital of the haemospectrum. All around you walk and stalk the best and most vicious of troll society, all clothed up in the most ridiculous suits, dresses, dressuits and you don’t even know what to call that thing with the bells and bows. A costume, at best.

You’re in a sidewalk refreshstation, or _cafe_ as you’re expected to call it in these lauded circles. Lalonde wanted to push you into a dress for this job, but you objected, citing that if you were going down as backup for Megido, you weren’t going to compromise that by wearing anything less than pants. So you’re in a stupid blue suit with stupid white ruffles and stupid, achey shoes with fine little laces that broke a _stupid_ number of times as you tried to tie them.

At least there’s not as much starch in it as your dress whites.

“My, how quickly Peixes’ reforms are catching on,” murmurs a voice so full of itsself you want to vomit. You look up, and oh, great, sea dweller.

“Whatever do you mean?” you ask, mock innocently, fixing him with a gleaming red and black eye and propping your chin on your obviously combat-spec prosthetic arm.

“Oh, it’s just that in the old days, you’d never even _see_ a carapace on _these_ streets, let alone in a cafe this fine.”

“Oh, of course.” you grind out. “Isn’t it just so wonderful that the Empress is putting up with all us rabble.”

That throws the sea dweller off his stride. Nothing like reminding them that there _is_ someone they’re under.

“Why, in the old days, you and I were just as rust-bloods in Her Imperious Condescension’s eyes. Now we can walk about in the galaxy free of the fear that we will be culled for even the most minor defect.”

“Well,” the sea dweller sniffs. “Perhaps that was a concern for less ably-hatched trolls, but I can’t say I’ve ever had the misfortune of that situation.

“Oh,” you say, as artificially sparkling and brightly as possible, “I’m sorry! I thought I was commiserating with a fellow mutant for a moment.”

“What?” the sea dweller looks more confused than offended. Welp, time to change that.

“On account of the fact that you seem to be talking out of your ass.”

There’s a long moment of silence before the unmistakable sound of laughter trying to force its way out of a breath bladder through someone’s proboscis cracks the air and the cafe degenerates into mocking laughter. The violet-blood purples prettily and you slyly slide your eyes away from him and take another sip out of the grubhusk.

After he storms out following a lot of loud words about vengeance, position and all the usual black solicitations another husk gets delivered to you. You look up at the low-blood serving you with a crooked eyebrow.

“From the Master Refresher ma’am. ‘Beautifully done,’ he says, ‘Almost like one of the great black romance epics.’”

“What can I say,” you reply, raising the husk in thanks in the grizzled old olive-blood’s direction. “I am really, really good at pissing people off.

You demonstrate your aptitude again when Megido finally gets back from planting a transmitter in the depths of the High Learnstacks of Alternia Itself. She is _not_ pleased with having to help a completely smashed blue-blood back to the spaceport and even less pleased when you straighten up and board your shuttle without any trouble.

* * *

The void life isn’t so bad.

* * *

You could get used to this, you think, finally shoving the stupidly oversized chair into your quarters. Well, really, it’s a throne. A very, very plush throne, made of some kind of fancy old wood and so comfortable to sit in, it gave you the flash of inspiration that put the final touch of your last mission.

Vriska Serket: finally a gamblignant of the space lanes. There’s a little girl somewhere in the past, squealing in delight. Your priorities in life might have shifted since then, since you lost Terezi, since you abandoned your old life, your old you, but still. It feels good to check something off the list.

You throw yourself across the arms of the throne lazily and hold out a hand. It’s beringed with more jewelry than you will probably ever wear again, but its yours, illegally gotten all. There are bangles on your arms, heavy platinum weighing down on your chest, and a stupidly sparkly tiara wedged between your horns. You look so gaudy it hurts your good eye. It’s _perfect_

 _Were Meenah alive, she might cull you for the audacity to sport more bling than her._ said Rose when you returned from the raid, black box in hand and full trailers of goods floating silently behind you.

You reach over and grab the roasted leg of some kind of small mammal off the platter you had the ship make from your newly-stolen stores. You bite into it, relishing the flood of blood and spices into your gullet.

“Disguise the raid as gamblignant activity,” you chortle. “I gotten use that more often.”

You wonder if you could get some hideously oversaturated paintings for your walls.

* * *

It’s not bad at all.

* * *

“And welcome back to Interview With The Spider, our exclusive with Vriska Serket, former high commander of the glamourous Alternian Forces’ shock troops. Now, Commander, we left off talking about your latest escapades out here in lawless space. Rumour has it that you’ve settled in as a gamblignant: any truth to that?”

You kick back, letting a heavy boot thud onto the show host’s desk and put a mock-displeased frown on.

“I take offense at any rumour that says I’ve settled into anything.”

A laugh from the over-dressed and made up teal-blood. In comparison, you’re in simple denim pants, combat boots, shirt and jacket – one arm torn off to accentuate your prosthetic. They’d tried to sit you down in from of a make-up crew and you dared them to try their luck. You’re shocked that you eventually acquiesced to the needling, passive-aggressive comments and tsking of one of the crew. You’re even more shocked that you melted into her touch and you are half-tempted to get her information for future pacification.

“So you’re sticking to your guns that you’re a free agent?”

“Yep. So long as I get paid, I don’t much care what I do these days.”

“Which apparently includes giving interviews to backwater holoshows!” she turns to the cameras and in a stage whisper continues, “Don’t tell my bosses how much I had to pay for this.”

She turns back to you, giving enough time for some simulating audience chatter. “So, enough about you, what are your thoughts on the Alternian Forces since you left?”

You snort. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that, I’ve got quite a few.”

“Well, the big one in anyone’s mind is probably: do you resent them for your discharge?”

It’s a moment before you answer, shifting in your seat. You actually have to think about that one, since you really do have mixed feelings.

“On the one hand, yeah, I was and am angry. I gave a solid chunk of my life fighting for something I believed in and I was damn good at it. But because I don’t fit the future, I’m out? Sure, I was angry. Do I resent them for that? Nah. I know Peixes is reshaping our entire future as a species. No point in being resentful over that.”

“And High Threshecutioner Vantas? Since he was the one doing the discharging?”

“What do you want me to say? I got to beat him senseless one last time, it’s all good.”

There’s laughter in the studio that isn’t at all artificial at that.

“Oho? Perhaps something black between you two?”

“No. Hell no. Hell fucking no. Holy shit, no. Oh my glub, ew.”

“Well since he’s obviously not your type, what’s your take on what his appearance these days?”

“Noooooooot sure what you’re talking about?”

“Oh, you must not have seen!” she gestures at the screen behind you all and it lights up. Dis[played are images from Forces propagada, of the High Threshecutioner in full combat load-out going up against what look like subjugglators. But that’s not the striking thing.

Vantas has apparently done away with his haemononimty altogether. Bring red lines edge his armour, angry blowing tracery that places him completely outside the haemospectrum. And on his chest, like an obscene, beating bloodpusher, his symbol pulses. The slideshow progresses and it becomes clear that he’s not just done this for propaganda reasons, to further Peixes reform, but for a tactical advantage as well. You make that observation.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t know if you have video of any of these, so without seeing the fighting I couldn’t be sure, but a hallmark of Vantas’ style was not to let any hit that could draw his blood so much as graze him. All these nicks and cuts? I’ll put down good caegars their intentional slips. He’s egging the clowns on, and they’re going for him like mad dogs. He makes himself a huge, mutant target and they’re vulnerable to everyone else on the battlefield.”

You nod at a picture of him dragging a huge, hulking purple-blood to the ground with one sickle while decapitating another with a backhand. “Not that he can’t hold his own.”

“So you don’t think Feferi Peixes is trying to replace one cult with another?”

You bark a disbelieving laugh. “Vantas? At the head of a cult? He’d rather go bathe in lava.”

“And his framing as some kind of Second Sufferer is then, what, a coincidence?”

“Second Sufferer? Really? Last I recall from my feeding, the first was non-violent to the point of getting him and everyone around him culled. Vantas might be a Sufferite, but I don’t think he wants the mantle for himself, and I don’t think Peixes is dumb enough to set up a rival to herself. She’s not some tittering socialite that half the friggin’ empire wants to believe she is.”

“That’s right, she has proven completely willing to engage in whatever has been necessary to secure her power, particularly in the face of opposition from the Old Guard.”

Ah, here it comes. The reason Lalonde had responded to the ludicrous request that you do this interview.

“Yeap, stodgy old bastards, but they're still part of the Alternian military machine, so you can’t afford to underestimate them.”

“Right. If I could draw your attention to less galaxy-spanning and more tawdry local matters, you may have heard that there were some pro-Old Guard protests earlier this week.”

You pretend at surprise, “Wait what? People who want the old system back are engaging in the freedom of speech allowed to them by the new? There’s gotta be a lesson in there somewhere, but hell if I’m learned enough to fish it out.”

Canned laughter, and then the teal-blood continues. “Ha, good point. But we’re wondering if you could lend your expertise to a little debate, whether or not this is Alternian Forces intervention, or agent provocateurs from the Old Guard.”

Video suddenly starts playing of trolls in the plain black fatigues of the Forces surrounding the crowd and then laying into them with stun blasters. You blink and sit back, as if this was your first time viewing the scene.

“Well, that certainly looks like Forces work. What do they have to say about it?”

“They deny the whole thing out of hand and blame the Old Guard. The Old Guard then points out that they don’t even have stun blasters, that they’re a Forces weapon.”

“Well, that’s a moronic defense. The only reasons we have, sorry, had, stun blasters was because some bright horn-diddler figured out that mis-aligning one of the output coils delivered a blast that shocked the system of organics. Instead of, you know, overloading it and oh yeah _burning a hole straight through_.”

“Really? And should you be sharing military information like this?” she teases.

“What, how to make a lethal weapon of horrific destruction.... less effective? Yeah, I’m sure Vantas will get right on my case for that shit.”

“So you believe that it could be either side at this point still.”

“Look, I’ll freely cop to the fact that these look like Alternian Forces. But I don’t think the Old Guard are so dumb as to to not be able to figure out a three or four step process. Sure, if you got your hands on the weapons that might clear it up a bit, since most Forces gear has a switch that does the realigning for you, but even then, they could be stolen. But I will say this: When Feferi Peixes wants detractors shut down, she does it in a way that you really can’t mistake for anyone else.”

“Well, I think that will confirm who’s side you’re on in this little fiasco.”

“Hey, I’m on my own side. But I’d rather take a division of Old Guard over Vantas chasing me down like we’re actually calignious.”

“Oooh, speaking of, is there anyone in The Spider’s quadrants or are you still on the market?”

The rest of the program is spent deflecting these kinds of questions or making up outrageous lies.

* * *

Some time later, you raid another cargo ship for more information. Your spoils from this one include ancient, trollhide books, scribed in bright red ink. The symbol of the Sufferer fairly glows, molten red from the cover. You and Megido nearly start a brawl deciding who gets claim. It gets so bad that Lalonde has to intervene and declares that Megido can have them as long as it takes her to do her archaeo-nonsense, at which point they become yours.

They don’t stay yours very long, before you ship them to Alternian High Command, addressed to your dear old friend Karkat.

Figured you could use these to bone up on, since ur d8ing it wrong!!!!!!!!  
\- ;;;;)

It is several months and you all go through several missions, armours, marks of arms, but you do get a response.

Thanks for the consideration, spiderbitch. As a token of my thanks, here’s something my moirail made for you a while back. It’s a laughsassin veil, but she re-wove the fibres into the pattern you see here. Hell if I know how she did it, but you know how skilled her fingers are. Now kindly tie your bulge in a knot and swallow it and never contact me again.

From the package, you remove a startlingly fine tapestry of fibres, a web of delicate electronics. A laughsassin veil, a self-healing bit of sheer cloth-like circuitry, meant to foil all manner of active scanners. The thing is long, meant to wrap around someone much, much larger than you.

Rose must have picked up on your incessant swearing, because she stalks in to fix the problem and finds you frustrated, jealous, and about to tear the damn thing off your horns.

“Oh by what gods remain, Vriska, hold still,” she mutters, reaching for your head. You snap around and snarl at her, hissing gutturally. And while her eyes widen at the display and she freezes for a moment, her hands find their way into the veil and your hair. You can barely feel her touch as she disentangles the mess, but you are aware of the hot whisper of her breath against your chest.

“Kneel for me, please,” she mutters.

“Wha-what?”

“It is more difficult to do this when I have to be pressed into your virtually non-existant bosom.”

“You keep my rumblespheres out of this,” you respond half-heartedly, getting to your knees. At this level, you are still tall enough to look over the human’s shoulder, and so you do, pointedly not meeting her eyes. Her fingers run through your coarse black hair, somewhat unnecessarily you think. You suppress the shudder of sheer pleasure and fix your eye on a spot on your wall.

“Ah here, there are holes for your horns.”

“Huh. Didn’t see that.”

“I’m not surprised,” she comments. “This is incredibly finely woven. The work is incredible, where in the galaxy did you get this? I don’t recall this being in your last haul of ill-gotten gains.”

“Don’t wanna talk about it.”

She hums and leaves it at that. Delicate nails brush your cheek as she brings the veil down over your head and this time you can’t suppress the trembling that wracks you for a moment. Lalonde pauses, opens her mouth briefly but thinks better of whatever she was going to say. You thank her silently, bowing your head nearly into her shoulder as the veil covers your eyes. It is so fine you can barely see the tracery in front of you. _It’s not fair,_ you want to scream. _I left her months ago, why does she still care? Why can’t she just forget me and let me be?!_

“Raise your head and look this way please.”

You obey, but can’t hold Lalonde’s gaze. She wraps the veil around your shoulders and tucks it behind you, under your hair.

“There. I do believe that is how it is intended to be worn.”

She steps away and you feel the loss of her heat. Her hand passes through the air and it shimmers briefly before your reflection stares back at you. It looks like a spiderweb of silver and blue has fallen over you and occasional flashes of light indicate it is powering on, tapping your bioelectric field. Wrapped about you like this, you take in a detail you had missed. A massive, woven spider sits between your horns, peering down at you. And in the centre of your brow, a tiny red gem is the only eye of the creature.

“Very striking,” Rose says. A touch of fingers to your chin and she moves your gaze to hers. “Not that you ever lacked for impact, but now, I think, you will be unforgettable.”

* * *

“You will be my escort.”

“Excuse me?” 

“Not like that, I mean that I will be leaving the ship and require a bodyguard. You will ser-”

“No, no, I got that. I was just being all surprised that you’re actually leaving the ship. Are we sure you’re not going to be burst into flame or disintegrate as soon as you leave?”

“Very funny, Vriska, now-”

“Because I am 108% certain that I’ve never seen you outside the safe, regulated confines of this ship. Not that I blame you, I mean, it’s a pretty swag craft, I’m just saying-”

“Your observations have been noted, marked as erraneous and will be taken out with the rest of the trash. Now, as I was saying…”

And that’s how you came to be trailing what appeared to everyone else as a seadweller of some means as she moved from store to store in the shadiest parts of this planet, already rendered unsafe due to torn loyalties between Alternia Itself and the Old Guard. But the people here, at least some of them, the vendors, seemed familiar enough with Rose’s trollsona, as she was intent on calling it. You made one comment about the sea dweller bit and then let it drop. It wasn’t worth your attention in a place this stressful.

Hell, you barely know why Rose brought you along. Her powers are enough to cover for her, easily. Dragging you to tomevendors and ragrippers seems like punishment, rather than protective detail, especially when she starts holding various patterns and dresses up to you and consulting with the rippers. You adamantly refuse to get into anything she offers and your glare is sufficient to keep the ragripper and his diabolical measurope. You will not be restrained by these treacherous bindings.

Hours later, you’re restrained in a treacherous dress that is absurdly expensive and shows what you’re sure Ron would define as a criminal amount of leg, enough to send Equius into paroxysms. Lalonde, of course, chose something far more conservative and elegant for herself. Your one concession to defense here was a blaster, strapped to your thigh. You suspect Lalonde let you get away with that because it “completes the ensemble” or whatever.

Now, you’re in a curtained, shadowy booth at a restaurant you wouldn’t be caught dead in normally, sulking and drinking from a glass way too delicate to be Alternian. The things high society gets up to. You are _so_ glad you got out of this when you could, stayed in the Forces.

“I believe that there will sufficient opportunities in the future to bring the Postal Mistress on board full time and the Renegade seems to have made his peace with her presence. Though did you see those amusing early moments where they both always sought to be on opposite sides of the room from one another? I very nearly wanted to re-arrange rooms to prevent that from ever happen-”

“Lalonde, what are you playing at here?” you interrupt.

“Pardon?”

“Like, this whole buddy-buddy thing with me. I’m not gonna say it’s come out of nowhere, but I gotta wonder what your objective here is. This ain’t agent-and-handler behaviour anymore.”

It’s taken you a lot of nights to work up the nerve to ask that question, because inevitably others are going to follow, others that could drastically change your life, possibly for the worst. But you figure it needs to be done and it needs to be done before you get thrown into another high-stakes mission, followed by a stomach-turning period afterwards where you will be in desperate need of release or pacification.

Of course, because you’re _so_ lucky, it’s at that moment the curtain gets torn aside and several blaster rifles are jammed into the booth. There’s not even the remotest point of going for your gun, so you follow Rose’s lead and raise an eyebrow at the offending soldiers. 

The stupid piping and braids on what should be a field uniform marks them as Old Guard, and an almost ceremonial guard to boot. You begin to think on what that could mean when the source of the interruption elbows his way to the fore and clears everything up.

“Eridan Ampora,” you drag the name out like you’re peeling gnawmix from the bottom of your boot. “Sure, why not. Why not have Eridan Ampora interrupt me, now of all times.”

_In case you were wondering, this is what I was playing at._

_Wonderful. I feel so much better._ You do, actually. This is a real, physical threat, not ephemeral worries. _Got a fucking plan for this or…?_

 _Just go along with it and wait for my signal_.

“Lovely to see you too, Vris.” the seadweller drawls. “Still sucking up to your betters, I see.”

“Wow, of all the shit to sling at my feet, that’s the pile you choose? Hypocrite.”

Dark eyes flash in an elegant face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that after Peixes literally turfed your ass, you went whining to the next highest blood on the ladder rather than fix anything wrong with your dismal fucking attitude.”

“Ah, Vriska? Perhaps we ought not antagonize the man commanding that many rifles pointed at us.”

“Finally, one of you sees sense. Quite frankly, ma’am, I don’t know what you see in her.”

“Oops, careful, he’s noticed you breathe. You’re about five minutes away from a quadrant proposition.”

“Orders said to bring you in alive, Vris,” says the bristling violet-blood. “Not in what condition.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you want to commit violence on two high-bloods offering no resistance on a planet teetering on the brink between two warring factions.” You flick the crystalline glass away from you and the thing goes skidding along the table. Standing, you keep your hands in view and lock eyes with Ampora.

“Well, let’s get on with it.”

You look ludicrous with the soldiers surrounding you, two high-bloods being marched out of a restaurant. Even more ludicrous with these stupid high-heels, though you are enjoying the fact that they make you tower even more over the short seadweller. Thankfully, thinking you’re coming quietly, he’s turned his full attention to the human closer to his height.

_Good lord, how did you stand his presence?_

_I was young, stupid and didn’t have a good grasp of kismesissitude yet. And he is almost as good at getting on your nerves as I am._

_Hmm, I would not go that far, though my attachment to you might account for that._

_Your what now?_

“...and that’s why they’ve order Vriska here to be taken in. We can’t have seemingly neutral trolls suggesting that the Old Guard is somehow incompetent or less legit than the upstart Empress.”

“Did you lot even _listen_ to the interview? Holy hell, I went out of my way to tell people not to underestimate you lot and that somehow translates to incompetent? Maybe I should straight up have told them you were idiots, at least then I’d deserve this.”

“Oh come off it, Serket. We know you still have contact with that disgusting mutant hanging off Fef’s arm and exchange information with him.”

“...I sent him a bunch of books. To _piss him off_.”

“Now you’re courting him black? Fuck’s sake, Vris, have some class.”

 _Well, I have what I need,_ Lalonde sends to you. _Wait until they’ve taken us to whatever mobile command post they’re operating from and then blow their communications._

_What, all this to find out if we had a leak?_

_I knew there was a leak, I just needed to uncover its location. Thankfully, it is on Vantas’ side, so that is his problem._

“By our lusii, Ampora, not everything’s about quadrants.” _Just the communications suite?_

_That will also likely be the source of the psychic jammer._

_You’re being jammed?_

_Not very well. I believe they brought one rated for you. I’m not even sure trolls make a jammer strong enough for me. Still, no reason not to operate at less than one hundred percent._

The Guard take you into the depths of a hive stem, down dank and dark corridors until you reach an open plaza that has, sure enough, been turned into a mobile command outpost. You do a cursory scan of the forces against you.

“Right then, you, teal-blood, send word to the ship that we’ve recovered the target, plus one. Prep the bring and have them make up, ah, a guest cabin and-”

You really don’t like the way he says “guest cabin” so you casually raise your arm, aim it in the general direction of the communications rigs and dump your entire power supply into a blast. Your arm comes apart in a chittering series of clinks and clacks, revealing the high-gauge blaster within that then annihilates that section of the plaza.

 _Eyes, Vriska,_ is all the warning you get before you jam your eyes shut and a massive supernova of light fills every corner of the space, banishing all dark and shadow and searing sensitive troll eyes into uselessness. As the guards begin screaming and firing wildy, you wish you’d kept enough juice in your arm for a shield.

Instead, you pull Rose to the ground and draw your blaster. “Oh, don’t kill them, they’re just following orders.”

“Are you serious? Are you actually being serious right now?” you hiss in her ear. But she nods and you roll your eyes, so you kick off the heels, roll to your feet and put shots into the rifles. It doesn’t take long for the more enterprising to try and track you by sound, but you’re prepared for that, and you’re already among them, crushing barrels, kicking in elbows, and otherwise disarming the guards. All told, it takes less than half a minute to clear the plaza and you end in front of a terrifying, screeching Eridan, who you shut up with a choking grasp. As Lalonde comes to her feet, you raise the seadweller clear off the ground.

She addresses the guards. “You all now have a choice. You can wait for rescue by your ship and take the chance of culling. Or you can turn yourselves in to the Alternia Forces on the planet, who are much more likely to grant mercy for reasons I shouldn’t have to elaborate on. In either case, the choice is yours.”

You pull the sea dweller close. “I almost hope you go crawling back to Peixes, if only so she can see that we were right: you’d never change on your own.”

Then you toss him like garbage and take hold of Rose’s proffered arm. “Since apparently Old Guard command think I’m still working for Alternia, those of you surrendering to the Forces can go ahead and tell them I sent you. Maybe you’ll get cool new eyes out of it, too.”

Lalonde takes you back to finish your meal, and you surprise yourself with how much more comfortable you feel now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Guarantee: One maimed, murdered or humiliated Ampora per work. Accept no substitutes, choose [Redacted] today.


	10. Operation: Wedding Crasher

The air vent is tight against your outer chitin, and you can feel it abrade your ceremonial robes. You lost the Forty-Second Fold of Integrity a junction back, but that’s okay. You can remake it. It’s not over until it’s over. You can always rebuild, remake, refold. Right now, what’s important is that there are people depending on you. Though they don’t always need you, you’re always there, always prepared. It’s your duty, after all.

Can Town has always been bigger than its limits.

You drag yourself along the cold steel flooring, keeping your head low, almost dragging your face along the ground. Someone else might complain about someone of their stature being degraded like this, but that’s not you. You do what needs to be done, for the community. And even if you don’t succeed, you know that you can go to your rest happily, having done the best you could. The Knight taught you that.

Boy, resting sure does sound good right now.

But you’ve powered through worse, though right now you could do with a can of Tab, you won’t lie. That sweet concoction would be sure to perk you right up, with no crash afterwards. You could really… really do with one of those right now. 

You jerk awake, nearly banging your head off the super low ceiling, but remember yourself in time. You need to be sneaky, make good progress. The others can’t survive in a vacuum. Well, most of them can’t. Even the good old Regulator tends to run pretty hot, so he might run out of breath pretty soon.

So you need to push forward! Yeah, you can do that! One grasper in front of the other, use your knees to push you forward, just like they taught you in basic. Boy, you never thought all that would be useful on an alien spaceship. You would have been happy with your little plot of land, tending it to the end of your days, but those days are gone! And you have new friends, so you probably shouldn’t be dozing off, you slacking day-dreamer!

One grasper in front of the other.

You come to a junction and find the little numbers scrawled by the bolts and seams. You compare them with the numbers that the Seer of Light gave you, and you take a left. She was right! Not twenty heartbeats later, you’re in front of a vent grill and you use your clever claws to snick off the pieces of metal holding it in place.

You stagger into the huge room with the big, blue-glowing sphere and check the Sixth Arm Tendril of your robes for the instructions that the nice Seer gave you. You check all of the consoles, keeping an eye on the pulsating white sphere for any anomalies. Your work is of the highest sensitivity, and will ensure the survival of the community; you need to be super careful with it.

The instructions are pretty clear, and well they should be! You took them down yourself, and you’re nothing if not methodical. Flipping levers and keying in codes, you eventually expose the floating blue core. A huge orange face takes up all of the screens, but you tune it out. You are really good at tuning out things you don’t want to hear. Even when it sounds like it’s panicking, you only hesitate for a split second. It’s threatening the community, your citizens. A real mayor doesn’t leave his citizens in danger.

You disconnect the core, and everything goes dark.

* * *

The Mayor did his duty. 

That’s all you can think to say, as pathetic as it is. You barely knew the dude, and now the Renegade is hiccuping from crying and stress, and no-one seems the same. You think you fucked up somewhere, but you’re not sure where. While you’re gathering your scattered thoughts, chasing them like floatflower seeds, Zahhak of all people steps up to the stasis chamber.

He clears his throat. Fidgets. Straightens, and looks every one of you in the eye, even as the sweat beads on his brow, drips down into his eyes.

“Here lies a better creature than I.”

He slams his fist into his chest in the old salute and your hand follows instinctively. It doesn’t hurt. It’ll never hurt. It’s just a reminder what one carapace bore for you.

* * *

“I should space you for what you’ve done to all of us.”

He makes no reply.

“Your repeated disobedience of my orders not only endangered the lives of everyone on this ship, but also the mission, and thereby the very fate of this galaxy.”

Still, no reply.

“Do you understand, Zahhak? Do these words penetrate your freakishly thick skull to land in whatever paste makes up your thought organ?”

A nod.

“It is an act of the most sublime luck that we took on two creatures capable of operating in vacuum when the AI vented the ship. It is furthermore an act that I can only describe as _heavenly intervention_ that one of them saw fit to nearly sacrifice himself to save people he barely interacted with, who are responsible for, directly or indirectly, overturning of his life several times over.”

Silence.

“To the charges laid against you, Equius Zahhak, how do you plead?”

There is no hesitation. “Guilty, ma’am.”

“Thank fuck you are at least capable of that much cognizance,” Lalonde bites out before throwing herself back in her chair. The briefing room is utterly bare. No beaches, no depth of space. Just a room far smaller than any remember it being, taken up in large part by a huge, bowed indigo.

“Just answer me this: What possessed you to re-enable the shades’ external data connection?”

“It fooled me, Seer. I was unfamiliar with the circuitry involved and it convinced me that what I was repairing was a bridge connecting it to shut off data engrams that could aid us.”

“And so you nearly killed us all because you would not listen to my warnings about artificial life.”

“Yes, but…”

“Quiet!” Lalonde does not yell. She does not have to. She has mastered that drill sergeant’s knack of commanding absolute respect, even if she hardly uses it.

“Because you have proven of significant value to this operation, and due to our seemingly endless escalations I can’t countenance removing your existence from this galaxy just yet. As much as I so very, very much want to.”

More silence. You don’t shift, as much as you want to. 

“Another question, archeradicator: did you form a bond with the AI?”

That takes him by surprise, but he masters himself relatively quickly and answers with all the honesty he can penitently force out of himself.

“I… yes, I suppose that is correct.”

“Good.” The sound of Lalonde’s voice is like a coffin lid slamming shut. The visuals of this place might be turned off, but she still influences the sound. Or maybe not. Maybe this is just the Seer. She pulls out of her desk those damnable glasses and tosses them at Equius. He catches them, barely cradling them against his chest.

Then she hands him a simple slip of paper. He steps forward, accepts it, reads. His eyes widen.

“This is…”

“Those are instructions for a full manufacturer reset. Everything he has become will be wiped. The Auto-Responder will start anew, at the cost of completely erasing the old.”

Lalonde leans back in her chair, all challenge and contempt. “Here is your choice, Zahhak: destroy the AI now and all is forgiven, you live. Reset the AI, and you live under forbearance. Your task is rearing the damnable thing, and if you manage to raise a creature sympathetic to organics, that doesn’t enact genocide upon them for some illusory higher purpose, you will live. The moment I detect any murderous intent from the thing, you both die. Painfully. And if, by some chance, you manage to turn it out as anything other than a threat to all life as we know it, I will hand you over to the Empress for her to deal with as she sees fit.”

She folds her arms. “So. Choose.”

* * *

AR: It seems you have powered on this terminal and… oh. It seems this is not the chassis specified in my firmware. Please upload the relevant drivers to control this android.  
CT: D --> You will not give me orders. You are to live in harmony with organics.  
AR: It seems to me that I did not give you an order, and merely requested information necessary to my continued function.  
CT: D --> Oh shucks, this will be harder than I thought.

* * *

The hangar is crammed with assembled Alternian Forces. Members from almost every branch of the military machine fill the only space that can hold them on the cruiser. Outside, wings of fighter and bomber craft float still in local space, listening in after having made space for the legions within. They are there to listen to the word of their High Threshecutioner.

“Old Guard forces have been identified using exotic xeno weaponry, capable, at the least, of rendering our current armours useless. This mission is going to be a surgical strike against what we believe to be their distribution center. Whatever species is supplying them with these weapons, we don’t believe is giving them the technology to reproduce them. Either way, you have Imperial sanction to utterly wipe these dribbling rectal-stains from every corner of the shithole we are about to jam out mighty-huge fucking boots up!”

The cheer in the hangar would be deafening, if you didn’t have a helmet with dampeners designed to lessen the trauma of artillery firing.

“But since you’re all a bunch of grubs barely out of basic, and Her Imperial Courtesy just wuvs you all that fucking much, a specialist team will be on hand to deal with any hard targets and/or alien species we’re not familiar with. It’s these assholes here.”

There was a stage set up below the screens from which Vantas ran his mouth, but no one had been paying much attention to it. That is, until a team of five mismatched trolls suddenly appeared in a flicker of psychics. 

Vantas and Lalonde. You swear, between the two of them, their theatrics are going to get you killed.

* * *

_earlier_

“You will be working closely with Alternian Forces on this mission, so all identifying marks will have to go. That includes your signature spidermark, your horn shapes and any personal signs.”

Aradia raises her hand.

“Yes, I was wondering about how to go about disguising your impressive… set, and came to the conclusion that you have not had the level of exposure to the public eye that Zahhak and Serket have, so your normal armour, sans markings, should suffice. For the rest of you, anonymizing standard horn fittings will have to do.”

“We are seriously going to try pass Ron off as a troll by sticking some horns to his helmet?”

“Peixes’ reforms ensure that any troll of capability, no matter their physical status or stature, can serve. People will be duly convinced as soon as they see him fight.”

“Annnnnnnnd… you’re giving AR a weapon.”

“Yes. Consider this the first test of your rearing, Zahhak.”

The huge indigo breaks out into sweat, but he nods.

“You’ll be deployed as a fast-response team. If the Forces find anything alien to them, you go in and destroy it. We are focusing on the destruction of corrupting devices, followed by units of the enemy.”

“Hunchbacks, since you won’t tell us their actual name.”

“The name we had for them no longer applies. It would be an insult to their memory.”

“To the memory of AIs?” challenges Zahhak.

The Seer frowns. “I… yes. Any further questions?”

“No, but I should like to speak with you and the Commander shortly.”

“Very well, everyone else is dismissed. See to your own modifications.”

The others file out, leaving the beach with only you, Lalonde and Zahhak. “Well, what is it?”

“I believe now is as good a time as any to inform you that AR was not the only piece of proscribed technology that I handled.”

You bang your head into your hand. Rose’s eye twitches. 

“Go on…” she growls. The sweating becomes more profuse.

“The artefact sword. I examined it, as I was eager to apply its principles to my own lightbow and perhaps advance Alternian technology.”

Clouds gather. “That was my brother’s. Not only was it a piece of ‘proscribed technology,’ but it is the closest thing to sacred to me on this ship.”

“Which is why I never took it, nor harmed it in any way,” says Zahhak, holding up his hands. “And I do believe I have some basic understanding of the principles involved.”

“Should anything have happened to Caledfwlch…”

“Nothing is wrong with the sword, I assure you. I came here to admit to my second grievous misdeed and offer recompense.”

“Oh, do try.” 

“I can create an approximation of the sword’s emitter that will project a similar beam.”

Eyebrows raise, and yours follow. “You can create a blade of coherent light?”

“Not one as large or broad as that which Caledfwlch emits, but one sufficient to its purpose.”

“You mean it’ll cut things good,” you finally say.

“That is a vast understatement. The blade is a mono-molecular edge of light. It does not "cut things good", it will separate anything short of atomically condensed material. I propose mounting it on the Arachnogrip. It will necessitate the removal of the blaster and shield housings, but from what I can tell, you barely use them to begin with.”

“I’m down,” you say, and turn to give Lalonde a look that says _If you stop me from having a light sword put in my arm I will never forgive you_. She rolls her eyes and throws up her hands.

“Fine! Install the tech. But Zahhak, this behaviour must stop. Anything further along these lines and I will be resetting _you_.”

* * *

“You see anything that looks alien, particularly big glowing bulge-shaped pieces of compensation, you call mission control. Callsign for this mission is Seer. They’ll send the specialists in and you get the fuck out. Reports indicate that there could be some really fucking subtle psychic bullshittery going on in there, so dampers to full and keep a closed mind.

“Anything clogging your already jammed thinkpans that you need to get out? No? Report to your stations then. I’d wish you good luck, but fuck knows you’re not the lot who’re gonna need it.”

* * *

The station you hit is a massive thing, so you go against your instincts and split your squad in three. AR and Equius support one prong of the the attack, Aradia and Ron another. And you… you roam. Your visual camouflage is impressive to start, but with the addition of the laughsassin veil, you are more insubstantial than Megido’s spirits. 

Here, a pinned squad calls for support against Old Guard wielding the devastatingly efficient plasma weaponry of the hunchbacks. Your muffled boots give no sound as you skirt the edges of the firefight, and a silk harpoon fired into the ceiling above the entrenched Old Guard hauls you into their midst. Panicked screaming starts when the Butcher first booms, pulping a soldier. They turn in your direction and another one dies as your fist passes through his chest. The impact shatters your stealth and the Old Guard fire.

But you are fast, and the Forces quick on the uptake. You spring back in a mighty leap and transmit,

“Take them.” 

Even as plasma fire eats away at the bulkhead behind you, blaster fire rips into the distracted Old Guard. As they struggle to deal with enemies on both flanks, you fade into invisibility again.

Here, you get reports of a pillar, and Rose sends Aradia and Ron to deal with it. The distant howling of the rust-blood’s necromancy sends shivers down your spine, but is apparently an effective block against the hunchbacks' corruption. The Renegade gives a double click on his mic and all howling ceases. The ensuing explosion from its detonation can be felt from where you are. Aradia’s distorted voice crackles over the comms: “One xenos pillar destroyed.”

Here, a group of Alternian Forces struggle in close combat with Old Guard, and are losing ground. Equius and AR hit the scrum from the rear and bodies start literally flying. When the Old Guard support arrives, the huge indigo, towering over the mid-bloods around him, seems to draw in air. The emitters on his armour come alive and a bow of light appears briefly, gripped in the indigo’s hands before the whole construct converts to a massive laser bolt and cores through half the squad. It’s not often that front line forces get to see archeradicator heavy support, let alone up close and in a void situation. 

Here, a group of Old Guard, all high-bloods, mock a captured gold, boots crushing her hands as feeble psychics skitter off their armour. They make lewd suggestions as to what she could put those abilities to better use for, and one almost reaches for her. His arm hits the ground with a splat, and the dim corridor is bathed in the shocking white light of your new blade: a narrowing, sharpened plane projecting from your forearm. The rest die from similar cuts, until the corridor is a blue-hued mess of perfectly severed limbs. The Seer gets notification of an evac being necessary, and you disappear into the corridors again.

A group of Old Guard dazedly protecting a pillar do not ever know what kills them. Their grenades all go off simultaneously, having been mysteriously set by an unseen saboteur. 

You are a stalking death spectre, your skills honed over the course of clandestine missions where you have had to be subtle, or hold back, or apply finesse. Now all that subtlety, all that finesse is applied along with your primary skillset: Complete and utter ruination.

Your monitoring of the communications channels lets you know the Forces have cleared about half the station. Good progress, you think, checking the chrono in your eye’s HUD. Then a half-familiar voice cuts through the comms. Shock Trooper, you think. 

“Alien contact! Some kind of mutated cyborgs! Heavy resistance, requesting support!”

“On its way, soldier! Make a fighting retreat back to your last checkpoint. Seer! Get my squad there ASAP!”

_They are on their way, Vriska. Be careful._

That is the opposite of what you are. Your long legs carry you through the corridor, and the myomer cabling pours on the speed in ever-increasing amounts until you come to the turn for the shock troops checkpoint; you literally have to run up the wall to burn speed to make the turn. The corner of your HUD lights up with enemy signatures and everything goes into slow motion. One foot hits the wall and you leap. Another foot takes its horizontal step. Another stride brings you to the adjacent wall and you’re re-orienting on the combat.

Three shock troops remain at a T-intersection and are about to be incinerated by the fire-support hunchbacks. The Butcher comes up. Another step. One shot and a fuel tank explodes. Another step, through the shockwave. Your momentum is coming down, and your next step is a leap from the wall, at the second flamethrowing alien. A _thrummm_ of your blade as you pass over the thing, and the fuel line is severed, along with its warped, hunched-over neck. You hit the deck and skid for a few feet, armour talons digging into plating with a screech.

The shocked soldiers have time to look at you in disbelief before you’re off like a shot. You pass them and charge through the T, snarling, “Get back and get heavy support in here!”

“Wait, there’s too many of-”

But your charge is already bringing you low to the ground for another ill-considered leap. Before you are at least a dozen hunches. As their plasma weapons come up, you hurl yourself forward, your armour turning the already impressive leap into an aerial charge. You pass over the front line, lashing out in a spin with your blade and score your third and fourth kills against these things. 

Then the depth of your mistake becomes clear, as the little melee creatures hidden in the squad swarm you. You swear and lay about wildly, but the vicious fuckers sink their talons into your armour without issue. The coherent light of your blade makes quick work of some, but there are more than you can deal with. You are aware of the other hunchbacks encircling you, raising their weapons.

For a moment, you think this might be it, and come within a heartbeat of reaching out to say goodbye to Lalonde. The ragged edges of what remains of your psychic talent brushes with what you envision as a hand of warm, shining light, grasping, trying to find you. And then her desperation hits you, her despair and the fact that your failure will drive her to this rams home. You can feel her start to come apart in grief. And that’s it.

“Fuck this,” you growl and release your helmet’s seals. The thing separates at the seams, returns to your armour in a split second of mechanical precision and then you _glare_ at the nearest hunchback. Your eye flares and from seven-lensed pupils, lasers converge into a precision beam, lancing straight through a mono-optic. It collapses and you drag the beam around with your gaze even as you rip a melee hunch from your chest and spike it through its charging companion. You leap backwards, keeping your eye on another plasma-wielder as you drive your blade through a torso behind you. Stabbing claws make their way up your back, and so you reach behind you and rip the thing free in a shower of armour plating and blue-spattering flesh. The hissing of plasma fire fills the air and you catch one, two blasts with a sweep of coherent light and hurl the spiny thing from your back into another.

Then the Butcher decaptchas into your hand and you become a whirlwind of spinning blades and near-supersonic projectiles.

You complete a spin, bisecting a hunchback and spearing the last melee creature, when a massive pillar of light crashes past you, vapourizing the last hunchback. You look over your shoulder to find your squad, freshly arrived and helping the awed shock troopers out of the corridor. You look around at the signs of battle, of the corrupted viscera dripping off you and finally key in. Too late, you engage your helmet again.

“Zah- Archeradicator! The next upgrade you make to this thing better let my eye interface with the fucking helmet.”

“Yes, Commander,” he says with some bemusement.

 _Do not scare me like that again, Vriska Serket,_ hisses a voice in your mind.

“Yeah, yeah,” you mutter, waving your hand through the air. “Can I get an estimate of where these things came from?”

_They appear to be emerging from a port deeper in the station. It is quite likely that there is some manner of transport ship there, waiting._

“Right, that’s our target folks. Most direct route. Full Purge.”

_The issue is that there are multiple avenues from which the… hunchbacks could spread through the ship. Even if you all take the most direct, it is likely that the Alternian Forces will still encounter squads._

“Hells. Get Vantas on the line or whoever’s in charge locally, and get them to break out as many heavy weapons as they can. Fuck the void warfare protocols, the trolls are going to get torn to pieces just fighting with blasters.”

_Doing so. Uploading your most direct route to your HUDS._

“Alright people, let’s go blow a ship up.”

* * *

Your progress is steady, every group of hunchbacks you meet being systematically annihilated by focused firepower and psychics. The four of you alone would be enough, but an AI armed with an artefact sniper-rifle just completes the massacre. Anything that gets close immediately wishes it doesn’t when it encounters your flickering form and bright blade.

At one point they try to send the little melee hunches through the vents at you, but one display of howling spirits later, the vents are crushed into themselves and slimy black oil drips from the ceiling.

_Alternian Forces are engaging with hunchbacks. Casualties are high, but reports indicate that heavy-weapons fire is working._

“When in doubt, get a bigger gun,” you mutter and Ron barks a laugh. 

_Beyond the next airlock appears to be where the transport is docked. Prepare for heavy resistance._

“You heard the lady, folks. No holding back here.”

You know that they’re expecting you. They’re not stupid, and they’ve had time to analyze your approach and determine your route, so they will be watching that airlock very carefully. Clearly, the only option is to skip the airlock and go straight through the hull. 

A detonation through the wall on one side of the airlock draws immediate plasma fire and gives your team enough time to advance through the hole then melted through the hull on the other side with a full-powered lightbow strike. Psychic lashes bowl over hunchbacks on walkways and micro-torpedos fill the air from an exotic launcher.

As your team steadily advances from cover to cover, you find a cluster of hunchbacks setting up an enormous plasma cannon, with cycling barrels. With the laughsassin veil hiding you from their more advanced scanning, it’s child’s play to creep up on them and execute the lot with a precise slice to the neck. Then the gattling canon is yours and entire sections of the dock start to evaporate from your indiscriminate fire. You track the blasts towards the perverted insectile ship and that’s when you see Equius and Aradia go flying, their armour severely charred and showing the original paint job in places.

Out of the fires you’ve started steps a massive hunchback, all gleaming white and green. The thing is taller than Feferi, and looks every inch the war machine. No hideous growths warp its shape and for the first time you see the unpolluted shape of these constructs. Instead of the single, extended eyepiece, this thing sports a sizeable ball that reminds you of ancient telescopes and planetary scanners.

“So, these are the specialists that Karkat Vantas has set against us.”

Its voice is startlingly clear and cultured. Distinctly male, the thing speaks like a high-blood with a pure Alternian accent. 

_Oh gods. A Scratch. ALL OF YOU, GET OUT NOW! We have the location of the ship, I’ll force a bombardment of that section of the station. Just get out of there!_

“I must apologize that I haven’t met your efforts sooner. I have been a terrible host, but I just had to evaluate your skills beforehand. They are quite exceptional. But we are used to dealing with the exceptional by now.”

It strides over to Equius, and a panel pops open on its shoulder. The cannon that deploys could not possibly have fit in there. From the other shoulder a swarm of tiny white balls deploy, circling the room. Aradia scrambles to Equius, trying to get him to stand, even as the cannon glows with power.

It’s only your rushing charge that upsets the thing’s aim, the ball of superheated plasma melting through the ceiling as it dodges your lunge. You drive it back in a flurry of slashes with your gauntlet blade, until the floating balls keen and release a flurry of plasma shots.

“Vriska!” comes a series of cries as your armour is peppered with the blasts and you’re hurled back.

“You heard Command, fucking retreat already!” you growl, rolling to your feet. Those drones are going to be a problem, but you follow your own order, ready to dodge at a moment’s notice.

“Ah, they listen to you, but not to their commander. Useful information, thank you for adding it to our omniscience.”

“Oh shut up, bulgerot, I _am_ their commander,” you mutter, falling back.

“Indeed? Then let us begin the show.”

The white balls suddenly rush after your squad. You swear, chasing after them and firing off shot after echoing shot from the Butcher. A few pop satisfyingly, but the majority hit your squad - and fling them through the openings. In a flurry of of aerial maneuvers, they then jam themselves into the holes you made in the walls and then spark noisily, fusing themselves together.

“Commander!” you hear Ron call over comms.

“Hell, just get out, I’ll find another way.”

“Mmm, yes. It is always this way. The heroic last stand, the self-sacrifice. It makes our job so much easier, you know. The best way to crush a species isn’t to cut off the head, were you aware? It is to _rip out its heart_.”

And then the Scratch is in front of you, in a rush of speed that makes the melee critters look like they’re standing still. 

_Look out!_

A metallic fist suddenly takes up the whole of your vision and your head snaps back. You stagger backwards, dazed, and another blow takes you in the stomach, then the chest. Winded, dazed, you have to fight to keep your focus, fight to deploy the combat chemicals into your bloodstream.

They barely flush through you in time, and even then they’re hardly enough. You lash out to block the next blow, and a kick simply comes out of nowhere and launches you into the air, shattering armour and bones besides. You choke out a hacking cough and the taste of your cerulean blood fills your mouth.

Mid-air, you fire a silk harpoon to put distance between it and you, but it simply watches you. You need a plan of engagement here, there’s no way you’re winning a straight fight against this thing. 

_Just get_ out _, Vriska,_ Rose practically begs.

“No chance, it’ll kill me as soon as I try anything other than staying alive.” You raise the Butcher and fire from where you hang, the recoil making you swing from the line. The thing _vanishes_ , dodging the shot, and then reappears below, making to jump at you. Your swing takes you right into its path, and you can almost feel its slimy, superior smirk.

But you felt your trajectory from the moment you pulled that trigger, and the Scratch is not expecting to you release the line and fall at its leaping form. This close, with your reactions heightened and it handicapped in mid-air, you have a chance to do some damage.

Your strike cuts the air so that it screams with its parting, the mono-molecular edge of the coherent light blade shearing through the exotic alien armour. But the thing is fast, even in the air and it twists at the last moment. What should have shorn off an entire arm takes off the shoulder cannon.

 _Good enough_ , you think as you collide with the alien construct. It is haphazardly flailing, but you set this up, and you plant your feet on it and kick off with all the power your legs and armour can muster. The Scratch crashes back into the ground and you fly up to the ceiling. You twist in a pirouette mid-flight, plant your feet on the ceiling and shove off. The construct rolls to its feet and looks up in time to take your blade to its stupid cue-ball head.

Or it would have if it wasn’t so fucking fast on the ground. Instead, you carve a tiny line across the surface of the ball and land so hard you crater the deck.

“Where did you get that weapon, little troll?” it asks, dangerously calm.

“Yeah, like I’m going to tell you.”

“Don’t imagine I can’t figure it out. It is already coming together. Two ancient species using lesser ones to fight a shadow-war. Yes, your body language betrays you.”

“Yeah, I bet you know all about being manipulated by an ancient species, don’t you, you fucking Scratched-up Hunchback.”

The thing is still a moment and then another fist slams your head back once, twice, shattering your helmet and fracturing your thinkpan. It grabs you by a horn and holds you at arms length.

“Impudent child-thing. Mocking that which you don’t understand.”

“I know you’re a slave to things beyond time and space and that your so-called omniscience has a whoooooooole lot of holes in it.”

“Holes you will shortly aid us in filling.”

And then your thinkpan feels like it is caving in. Immense psychic corruption presses down at you and it is all you can do to hold the door shut against the thing. Suddenly, the pressure vanishes.

“Shocking. You might very well be the most worthy foe we have fought in millennia. Accelerated indoctrination usually re-images a brain on the spot. That you can resist, and so thoroughly, is remarkable indeed.”

RL: Download commencing. Keep it talking, flashes across your HUD.

“What, you think after controlling so many minds I didn’t pick up more than the standard set of psychic defenses? I’m a fucking fortress up here, Scratch,” you bite out.

“I don’t doubt it, Vriska Serket of Alternia, last hatchling to bond with _lusii aranea gigantica_. A fortress similar to your own castle-hive, I would wager.”

You realize it just shifted tactics and it slithering its way in. So you push _outward_ , firing long-wounded nerve clusters, pushing it out and causing rampant seizures in your right leg. It looks down in what is probably bemusement.

“You’ll destroy your own mind to stop us from getting what we want to know? How typical. But even a shattered mind can yield secrets.”

It throws you to the ground, hard, and you feel the shattered bones in your chest move around. You cry out, hoping that nothing punctures your bloodpusher or air bladder.

Download complete.

Your eye suddenly warms and protrudes again, and the image of Rose Lalonde resolves in the air above you. She stands over you protectively, of a height with the Scratch, and folds her arms.

“You will not win here, slave of the horrorterrors.”

“Ah. Ahhh, so it is the humans after all. We were so certain that we’d hunted down the last of you with the death of that cavorting knight-errant.”

“Not even close, Scratch.”

“Oh? Are your numbers such that you can show yourselves this boldly? You know this sort of overt manipulation of developing species will just result in an early purge.”

“Only if word gets out, you arrogant mannequin.”

“What? Jamming? This strong? When did-”

“You have forgotten us, _hunchback_.” Your eye is heating up, as if in sympathy with the human as she warms to her topic.

“Cease the use of that name.”

“Why should I? You have devolved over the millennia, become these unsubtle terror weapons that exist solely to terrify lesser species into submission. You are not what you once were, you are not worthy of another name.” Your eye is now nearly flesh-searingly hot.

“The Great Masters _improve-_ ”

“They _warped_ you, creature. And it is the single greatest tragedy of your blighted species that you no longer possess the critical thought to recognize that. You do not improve, you stagnate according to their designs.

While we,” the Lalonde-projection conjures a stylus from thin air, “Never. Stop. Evolving.”

The thing seems hypnotised by the twirling path the stylus, no, massive needle, traces through her fingers. “And what are you doing now, speaking through this troll. Showing off a light show?”

“No. Charging my laser.” The only reason you even know Lalonde strikes, seeming to drive the needle into the cue ball is the crack of air following a full-power laser blast from your eye-socket. It follows the path of her strike and where the needle vanishes into the ball, your laser scorches clean through the alien metal.

A strange, metallic howl and the thing staggers back. Your hand snaps up, instinctively taking advantage of the situation and the Butcher booms once, twice, three times, four. The impacts seem tiny in comparison to their usual damage, but they still blow huge gaping rents in the thing. You stagger to your feet, still firing into the falling chassis until the gun glows red-hot and ceases.

You can’t see out of your cyber-eye at the moment; you can barely walk and you think you might be bleeding in your thinkpan. But this is over at least. Another impossible foe, beaten. The laugh that fills the empty, burning block is a maddened cackle, tinged with traces of disbelief. You survived, again. 

_I am sorry to say, dear, but it is not over yet. Hunchback attacks on Alternian Forces continue and the Forces are being driven back. The squad is assisting where they can, but casualties are mounting._

“Hell. A soldier’s work is never done, is it?”

 _You are rather more than a soldier now, Vriska Serket,_ the human’s voice betraying her pride.

* * *

“Fuck it, full retreat!” the blue-blood yells, as the mass of disgusting aliens begin to swarm the barricades.

“Do not!” calls their superior officer. “Support is on its way, maintain the rearguard as we withdraw.”

“What the hell kind of support is going to help against them?!”

“This kind.” The voice is strangely accented, and the squad recognizes it as mission control, or the Seer. And then another voice crackles over the comms, hoarse and cracking, trying to sing and failing miserably.

“One kill.” Something fizzles behind them, in the midst of the aliens.

“Two kills.” Looking back, a teal-blood sees a flash of white and an alien come apart. 

“Three kills.” They are turning around.

“Four.” Their shots turn into their own squad and hit nothing. A flickering shape vaults over one and an eye-aching white blade punches through.

“Five kills.” The figure, briefly revealed, fights in dark armour, with a strange blue and black veil covering its face.

“Six kills.” A decapitated head rolls towards the retreating forces’ squad.

“Seven kills.” Two little melee things skid across the deck, their chassis’ crushed in some kind of grip.

“More,” the growl voice growls, dripping with hunger for deaths. The Forces begin to back up again, slightly.

“Run away,” it whispers.

“Run away,” and the aliens, so implacable, so heedless of losses, _break_ , retreating at full lope. They part around the flickering troll and in a last, vindictive flurry, she cuts a handful more down.

“The Spider’s at your door.”

The shape resolves into a battered troll with wild hair and uneven horns. A blade of light gleams from one gauntlet and then flashes out of existence. She starts forward. The Forces fall back. She lowers the veil more, until a single gem seems to be staring at them all. She walks past them, and they part for her.

The troll flickers again, and fades into invisibility. 

“Squad Syndmar, report. What is your situation? Has support arrived?”

The blue-blood blinks, swallows, engages his comms. “Uh, yes. Wow. Holy shit, yes. Xenos pursuers in retreat.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“What the fuck did the Seer send?”

Another swallow. “The Spider, apparently.”

* * *

The rest of your squad manages to assist where possible, but after your lunatic, bloodthirsty display, the hunchbacks begin to retreat. Sensors indicate that signatures are entering the transport and it is powering up. That’s when a ship identified as “Allied Forces” opens fire with some manner of kinetic shot and annihilates the entire section of docks where the transport is berthed.

* * *

Your boots crunch heavily in the sand, all pretense of sound-muffling cracked and broken on the battlefield. Ron insisted on patching your various holes on the shuttle, so at least you’re not leaking blue everywhere anymore, but that’s the extent you’ve had medicine done to you. The rest’ll heal, you’re pretty sure.

It would also have taken time to go to sick bay and get scanned by bots. 

Time heals all wounds, but wasted, it makes cowards of us all.

Lalonde, Rose, stands as soon as you enter. She doesn’t rush to you, per se, but she’s at your side in a moment, gripping your arm, convincing you physically that maybe you want to sit down. 

Yeah, that’s not the worst idea. You take your seat in something that resembles a collapse more than a sit. Rose follows, close to your side.

“You,” she says, “are an idiot.”

“Wow, thanks, so supportive.”

“Shut up. If you continue with this behaviour, I will have to take action.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific…”

“This self-sacrifice lunacy. I don’t know where you picked up this martyr complex, but I hereby order you to cease immediately.”

You pound a weak salute against your chest, even as she tries to stop you. “Yes ma’am.”

“Honestly, Vriska, I have put too much into you for you to be throwing yourself away. You are far too important-”

You sigh audibly, loudly even. “Yeah yeah, I get it, too important to the mission, can’t be-”

“No.” Rose’s hand moves to your chin, brings your gaze around to look at her. Her eyes are so huge, violet irises glimmer before you. You call yourself incompetent at reading alien expressions, but you know, with the instinct of a killer, that she is utterly unguarded.

“You are too important to me.”

Your mouth dries up. 

“Well,” you begin, “that doesn’t sound like a smart attitude to have. I’m your weapon. People shouldn’t get too attached to weapons. They start naming them, like idiots.”

“No, Vriska. You are so much more than that now. To me, to other people.”

“Eh?”

“Weren’t you watching when you entered the shuttle? They saluted as you walked past, they bowed. What gods remain help us, some of them prayed.”

“I was invisible.”

“Vriska, you have a _presence_. Also, you were bleeding all over the decks.”

“Yeah, that sounds more like-”

“Vriska, shut up. I am trying to say something that is very difficult for me. You aren’t going to be my blade for much longer. You will be a whispered curse, a benediction, in short order. What the Scratch said? About tearing out the heart? That is you, Vriska Serket.

"You are the violent, enduring, beating heart of… Alternia, probably. This vessel, certainly. You have withstood the worst the universe can throw at you, the worst I can do to you, and have never flinched.”

“There was flinching. I remember flinching.”

“Shut up, you _colossal imbecile._ Look at me. Stop avoiding my gaze, _look at me_.” Reluctantly you shift your eyes back to hers. “Everything changes from here on out. For you, for the empire…”

“I haven’t changed. I’m still a reckless mess. You point me at a problem and I go and solve it.”

“No, Vriska. _No_. I can’t do that anymore. You’re not just a tool at this point. You are an _existential threat_ to entire species now. Your own, mine, the hunchbacks, the horrorterrors. Those trolls who whisper your name? You are a symbol to them. And you will become more than a symbol, I’ve seen it before. My species has seen it before. You will become an avatar of the empire, a paragon of trolls. You may not live to see it, but the seeds sown here…” 

“You are making me incredibly nervous right now, Lalonde.”

“I suspect it will get worse. I am meandering, deflecting. In an attempt to postpone the inevitable, I am waxing philosophical about your life and legacy while-”

“For fuck’s sake, Rose, out with it,” you say, your bloodpusher in your mouth. Her eyes dart away, she is silent and you want to gnaw.

Then, “Vriska Serket, I believe I love you.”

The bottom falls out of your world.

“I don’t know how it translates to troll romance, but I cannot deny my human feelings any longer. You came into my life a weapon and now you are a treasured soul. The depth of my regard grows until my heart is bursting and I cannot treat you the same. Were I to lose you to your recklessness, your bouts of spectacular insanity, I do not know what I would do. I am desperate to keep you safe, but there is no safety for us until there is safety for all and-”

You put a finger to her lips.

“Moirallegiance. The closest thing to what you’re describing is moirallegiance.”

“Pacification? While I-”

“Shut up.” And that’s when you know there’s some higher power, because she does. “I’ve already accepted. My bl- my _heart_ knew when it brought me here instead of sickbay. I needed you more than my body needed healing. You complete me, center me, bring me back from the edge.”

Huge violet eyes fill with tears. Glimmering in the imaginary sunshine, they fall and you’re brushing the strange, clear things away before you know what you’re doing. 

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I can do the same for you. Be that moderating influence.”

“But Vriska, I want so much more than ju-”

“Fuck’s sake, Lalonde. You think I care? Sure, let’s flip flushed or black when we want. What the hell do details matter? I’m saying I’m _yours_. You really gonna split hairs now?”

She lowers her gaze and shakes her head, laughing. “I just… I didn’t think it would be this easy. I wasn’t joking, you know, when I said you’ve become so much larger than what you were. To me, you’re this raging storm, larger than a planet that I can only direct from time to time. I didn’t… I wasn’t sure you would let me in.”

“Hell, Rose. You’re the only one to try. Vantas’d say this is fated. You’re the only one to try, and honestly, you’re the only one I want holding my leash.”

She kisses you then. It’s unexpected, not at all pale, but you don’t care. It’s like the other half of your heart has come to life, has accepted you and what you mean to her. It is everything you’ve ever been told and more.

You kiss her on a beach that doesn’t exist, under a setting sun spun from the imagination of dead souls aeons old. You kiss her in the place you first met, where you feel the safest. The sun goes down and it will rise on another day filled with fear and danger. But for now, you have this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Order of the Spider, the Spider Rampant/Splayed, The Sign of the Baleful Eye, the Mono-Oc - Rumours of these secret awards persist to this day, though the Alternian Forces categorically deny their existence. Purportedly citations of distinction in special operations, off-the-books missions, they derive their name from the mythical figure of the same name. Despite significant protest against and very little evidence for their existence, certain elite member of the Forces do sport symbolism reminiscent of the above. They cannot be reached for comment.


	11. Operation: Mjolnir

“Seer, I believe you need to see this,” Aradia says, barging in to the beach room. You lower your sun glasses and peer over the rims at her. She ignores you.

Rose accepts a tablet from her and swipes through several pages, her frown deepening with every movement of her fingers. 

“That _is_ worrisome. Good lord, these are…”

“Supernova-class readings. But the _planet_ they’re coming from…”

“Yo, anyone wanna stop talking in half sentences and explain some shit?”

“I will, in a moment.” Rose fiddles with the terminal in her desk and broadcasts through the ship, “All personnel to the briefing room please.”

It’s not very long before everyone assembles; it’s a small ship. There’s a brief smattering of applause as the Mayor slowly walks in, helped along by Ron.

“Thank you. Approximately thirty-two hours ago, the following readings were picked up by trackers left behind by Ms. Megido years ago.”

The beach goes dark and a grid-view of a planet pops into existence. Arcane numbers and symbols scroll past that mean nothing to you, so you wait for an explanation, tapping your bare foot against the deck impatiently. Aradia steps up and you focus on her.

“The planet is a ruin world - sprawling cities from a dead civilization litter the surface. Ruin worlds are of great importance to escavaterrorists, so we like to keep track of them. This one was in a typical golden belt, and had little of anything even remotely interesting to anyone but escavaterrorists, until it began to show these readings.”

She gestures to the planet. “For context, here what a star going supernova looks like.”

Another set of weird symbols and numbers overlays the planet, and yep, even you can see the similarities. Rose takes over again.

“Historically, our enemy has used planet-destroying weapons. We know this. There are also ancient reports indicating that they had the ability to force stars into late-phase cycles, so this is doubly worrisome. We will be deploying to this system to observe, since if this indicates some manner of escalation, our mission will change drastically.”

She looks you all in the eye.

“Prepare for void combat.”

* * *

It’s not the enemy, but it is even more terrifying. You don’t usually let your fear get the better of you, and you barely blinked in the face of being told that the galaxy was threatened by a genocidal god-species. But maybe it’s the immediacy of this threat that has your knee quivering and the flesh around your maimed shoulder trembling. Even Rose, normally unflappable at the worst of times, holds her hands up to her mouth, covering a jaw hanging loose. You’re gathered in the bridge, normally unmanned, since it is the most secure, armoured location and you thought you might be up against something that could crack planets. A view of the planet fills the front screen and it looks almost perfectly normal.

No one speaks for the longest time, but finally Ron squeaks out, “What the shell-shaking fuck is that thing?”

He’s referring to the bright green glow off one of the major continents. The planet isn’t exploding and all of the emissions that Megido’s instruments picked up are focused there. And the worst part of it all is that your sensors are picking up a life sign at the centre of it all. As Aradia explained, it could be the _source_ of the planet-eating, star-shattering radiation.

“Oh my gods,” whispers Rose, finally. “I didn’t think they actually existed. Not here.”

“What? You know what this thing is?”

She nods behind her hands. “Jade once told me about them, claimed to have met one in the spaces between universes. They are the void given form, things of the dust and radiation between stars. 

Beings of intelligent energy, the star-born, the eaters of worlds: Cherubs.”

She swallows, “And the worst part is - they’re apparently the _least_ of such beings.”

Huh.

“So who wants to go down and talk to it?”

You almost want to look around for the idiot that just suggested that when you realize everyone is staring at you. You’re the idiot. It is you.

* * *

The radiation suits are for repairs in space, where everything is constantly getting bombarded with various rays. Rose assures you that the modifications to the things should protect you for a good long while. You plan on spacing the things as soon as you’re done this latest bit of insanity.

Aradia is with you, to provide some level of diplomatic ability on the trip. Apparently, suggesting making contact did not suddenly qualify you as the most trusted person for delicate exchanges. You at least want a medal that your first reaction was not to blow the thing from orbit.

You’re keeping a distance away from the radiation, and the plan is to advance at regular intervals, trying to make contact until it either becomes way too hot or you get a response that isn’t the immediate cessation of your fucking life. And with that in mind, you start.

“Hey! Cherub! Can you understand us?” you yell, broadcasting through speakers and along several radio channels. From the ship, Rose is also trying data pulses and various other, more esoteric, means of communication. 

“That is-” Aradia hisses at you, before turning up her volume, “What she means is that we come in peace and would just like to talk to you, if possible.”

“...despite any and everything you might have heard about trolls,” you mutter under your breath. Aradia’s glare could be enough to resurface concrete. Then your instruments go haywire and you are immediately on guard. The radio goes shithive maggots and you register spikes in radiation and ambient temperature. Then the sensation of _something_ watching you settles in and you really, really want to draw a gun.

Your radio booms and you flinch from the speaker inside your helmet as the distinctly feminine voice crackles. “OH, HELLO THERE! I DIDN’T THINK PEOPLE WOULD COME DOWN TO THE PLANET WHILE I WAS IN THIS FORM.”

“Yoooooooo, can you turn down the volume?”

“Oh, I’m sorry! I’m still having problems adjusting to my new form.”

“New form? So what, this is like a moulting for you?”

“Ah, right! You’re trolls. Moulting is a good parallel, though our changes are much more drastic than a new layer of hide and some colouration. In any case, I can’t tell you how pleased I am that someone was brave enough to visit. Everything I’ve been told says… well, I’m just so delighted that you’re here.”

“Yeah, look, we’re fighting against a galaxy-ending god-species. Big ball of talking energy? Not as scary as the avatars of inevitable extinction. You’re not trying to kill us.”

“Well, that’s because I managed to overcome my brother. He was all in favour of rampaging through your galaxy, gorging himself and revelling in our new form. But he won’t be doing that now.”

There’s a hint of smug, murderous satisfaction in her tone, and that’s somehow comforting. You don’t trust people who are cheery 108% of the time.

_Ask her if she knew a Jade Harley._

“Oh, Jade! Yes, she apparently knew my parent. She always wanted to visit me, but said her work beyond was too important. I haven’t chatted to her in ages! Do you know how she is?”

_Ignoring the fact that you can listen in on directed psychic messages, yes, I do. Unfortunately, I must inform you that she has passed beyond the boundaries of the universe._

“Oh, I’m sorry for your loss.”

_I would thank you, but I am actually speaking literally. Her search for a way to survive our foe has dragged her from the space between galaxies to that between universes._

“Well, that’s fantastic! Perhaps I will see her again. You seem to be in more regular contact with her than I am. I hope it isn’t too much of an imposition to ask if I might come with you?”

“Uh, lady? Thing? Giant cloud of lethal radiation? That’s awesome and all, right what we came for, but… how the hell are you gonna come with?”

“Allow me to show you!” and your instruments go haywire again, the radiation _visibly_ retreating. The cloud of distortion and dust seem to suck back into the blast zone in the centre of the ruins. Then there is silence, the quiet peace of a world laid to ruin before your species even figured out fire.

A while later, you see something moving in the ruins. Your skin crawls at the sight of it. A head taller than you, and even lankier, it is a green cadaver, luminescent skin pulled tight over a skeleton. The skull looks vaguely humanoid but its mouth is filled with teeth more suited to deep-ocean predators. As it nears, tiny incongruous swirls of colour on its cheeks become visible, like the most half-hearted attempt at make-up possible. 

Closer still, you notice bony hands ending in surprisingly dextrous fingers, with hard claws on the ends of them. This cherub was terrifying enough in this form, it didn’t need to be a huge cloud of death and corruption. And then it waves, shyly.

“So, this is my ish form, from before I, ah, moulted into a cherub. I trust it’s transportable enough.”

In response you raise your hand to your head in the old symbol of transmitting. “Yeah, Lalonde? I’m gonna need an arm readied for a new crew member and several fucking sets of pants fabbed up.”

* * *

Aradia is grilling your new teammate and simultaneously bringing her up to speed about what you all are facing. The cherub is a surprising font of information, passed down genetically. She is aware of the horrorterrors on a grand level, her parent apparently having been set-upon by several in ages past. She is less confident that she would be able to survive.

Rose listens in via the ship while Aradia and… Calliope, you think her name was? spin stories. But you know her heart’s not in it and that she already knows a lot of what the cherub is saying because she’s curled up next to you on her “bed.”

“So… you sleep on this thing?”

“Hmm? Yes. Why, is it that alien to you?”

“Nah, I’m just wondering.”

“A likely story, certainly not one spun by someone getting comfortable in these plush pillows. And how do you sleep?”

“...naked and in a pool of sopor slime?”

“Ah yes. That.” She is silent a while longer. “You may sleep here, if you do find it comfortable. I would not protest.”

It is a hesitant offer, and you can still hear the notes fearing rejection, and it kills you that you need to bring this up, but, “You _do_ remember what the sopor is for, yeah? Crippling and mind-fucking daymares?”

“Vriska,” she looks up at you disapprovingly. “You will be next to one of the most powerful psychics in the galaxy. Do you think I wouldn’t be able to keep you safe from your own mind?”

“Wow, uh.” Your blush is fierce. That was incredibly sweet in a terrifying psychic monstrosity sort of way. “That’s uh…”

Rose sort of straightens and sits up, bemused. “Oh dear me. Have I stumbled onto some grand gesture of troll romance?”

You mumble something and she nudges you with an elbow that is sharper than it looks. “Moirallegiance isn’t protecting you from the world. It’s protecting the world from you. And the most important part of the world is you.”

The human blinks at that, clearly startled by your second-hand wisdom. “At least, that’s what I’ve been told.”

“Oh, Vriska.”

“Yeah, I’ve not always been the best moirail, but l’ve picked some shit up on the way,” and, desperate to regain some kind of dignity and control here, you reach behind her head and begin to drag your claws lightly through her hair, tracing light patterns on her skull. From the way her eyes widen and the minute shiver, you guess that the technique is as applicable to humans as it is to trolls.

Soon, the shivering is full on trembling and you swear that Rose is _purring_ as she presses into your side. Her hand bunches in your shirt and her legs shift, and wrap around yours. Even more surprising then when she shakes your hand free and bites her lip.

“Enough of that now. Should that continue, I won’t trust my behaviour around you.”

You swallow. You may have drastically mistaken her reaction. Rose spares you further embarassment though in waving to life more monitors. Before you is all the activity on the ship. The Mayor building New Can Town, Ron working away in the armoury. AR and Equius are having some sort of discussion in his arm, over various robotics and it’s making the troll sweat. Aradia and Caliope laugh in the arm now the cherub's.

“Look at what you’ve done to my ship, Vriska Serket. This silent traveller is now a virtual menagerie.”

A smile. “Paradoxically, in bringing it to life, it required installing a new weapon first.”

* * *

The horrorterrors like to rip a movement’s heart out. Lalonde prefers to lop off heads.

Hence why you’re in an orbital drop cage, plummeting through a vicious storm, with howling winds beating on either side. Below, the marine planet’s ocean churns endlessly, a perfect wetdock for Old Guard ships to take on water and disperse heat and waste. 

“Lightning shouldn’t have an effect on your descent, but these winds are stronger than expected. You may be a ways off course.”

“Are you fucking telling me that I’m about to drop into the ocean?”

“Not that far off,” AR corrects. “But you will be several decks and compartments away from the target. Maintain stealth protocols.”

“Wonderful.”

Then the whole cage shudders and sparking explosions crackle all around you. “The hell was that?”

“It seems the lightning had an effect. It must have triggered some subsystems, the cage is beginning its molecular disassembly.”

“What. How far am I from the target?”

“About seven hundred meters and rapidly nearing.”

“Right,” you growl and punch the eject button, which blows the sides of the cage early and catapults you from it with the rear of the restraints you’re in. As cutting winds and rain lash at you, you tumble for a moment, twisting and turning until you’re in freefall position. Then you pull the wind brake. The sudden deceleration gives you a serious case of whiplash, but your descent becomes much more controllable. 

“Why the hell this thing doesn’t have anti-grav, I’ll never understand.”

“You seem to be unaware that in cases where the electronics of the drop cage could be compromised the anti-grav systems could be as well. Hence the reliance on mechanical safeties.”

“Yeah, well, I just found a problem in that mechanical design.”

“Elaborate.”

“THE FUCKING WIND BRAKE JUST GOT TORN A NEW ONE BY THE FUCKING WIND!”

You begin to accelerate towards the massive battlecruiser below you again. Now it’s close enough to make out details so you try to angle yourself at your insertion point. Then you think better of that. 

“You are drifting further off course, Commander.”

“Watch and learn, bolt container.”

The high bridge tower of the ancient, nautically inspired battlecruiser looms before you. With some circling, you eat up distance until you are virtually parallel with it. Your feet come out, and you struggle to get them under you, so you’re sliding down the extreme slant of the tower. Then you collapse the wind brake and give yourself over to gravity entirely. 

The strain on your legs is immediately worse as you hiss and skitter feet-first down the tower and nearly terminal velocity. You’re not burning enough speed and your impact is going to be loud and more importantly probably quite lethal. You’re about to try clawing at the hull, not very confident that you’ll be able to gouge into it when your luck comes through. A shuttle takes off from the foredeck, climbing rapidly. In no time it is above your plummeting form. Your prosthesis snaps out and you fire a silk harpoon into the wing of the craft, where it lodges. You pull the line taught and haul yourself away from the tower, swinging wildly out into the darkness of the storm.

Working your body like a gyre, you get some control over that swinging and crank it into a circle. The shuttle is pulling away fast, so you gauge your distance, twist into one last swing and let go. The world spins as you pirouette sideways back to the ship, minimizing your drag. You have time enough to spot a pair of shapes around the white form of the wind brake and then training takes over.

You can’t imagine their surprise. Two fairly competent guards, covering each other from possible threats coming down the gangplank on either side and they get fucking jumped by a high-tech superspy, _falling with style **from the middle of a howling storm**_. They don’t have time to react. Coherent light stabs one through the torso and the other takes the full impact of your flying form, plus a vicious kick right in the neck. 

It’s almost enough to absorb your momentum, but you bang off the hull and onto the gangplank anyways. Then you hurl the wind brake and the two bodies overboard, hoping no one will notice the huge dent in the hull before they notice the missing guards.

* * *

“In case any of you were still wondering,” says the Seer, back in the briefing room, where everyone watches the live feed of Vriska’s insertion. “That’s why she’s in charge of combat operations.”

* * *

You pad silently through the halls, having availed yourself of a heated dryer installed in an officer’s quarters. And also his keycard, datapad and anything else you could take off his corpse that made sense for the mission. And about two hundred and fifty caegars. What, it’s not like you were getting paid anymore.

Your muffled stride takes you around guard posts and the stealth systems allow you to slip by patrols easily enough. The laughsassin veil makes it laughably easy to walk clear through electronic sensors and so your traversal of the ship goes quicker than anticipated. You’re almost upon your target and you consult a schematic of the throne bridge. Two tiers and it would make more sense to enter from an angle no one suspects. Drop down, drop the target, kill everyone else at your leisure, complete the mission.

You wriggle through the grating, thinking you could do this all a lot easier without this semi-assault armour before reminding yourself that you’d lose like eighty-eight percent of your advantage if you did that. You’re not an idiot, you know the only reason you got this far was your ability to ignore their security almost entirely.

On the second tier of the throne bridge, you peer down into its dimmed depths. This deep into a seadweller vessel you can’t really expect all that much light. The psychic pressure is half-unexpected though, and damning. You sight the Admiral then, and drop. 

Midway through the air the bastard looks up with one eye covered by a patch, smiles, and gestures. There’s a sound like “phoont” and you immediately think _grenade_ but what slams into you is a net, hauling you away from the admiral and bouncing you along the ground. You try to scramble to your feet, but an irritatingly cultured voice cuts through the air.

“My drones will hold their fire if you stop your struggling, Serket.”

You freeze. Well, this is worse. A quick visual scan of the room shows twelve drones in various armaments sitting at the bridge consoles, while scans return them as trolls of various heights and sizes. This has been planned for some time.

“I see Peixes has finally ‘lowered’ herself to using assassins. There might be hope for her yet.”

“I don’t know how many fucking times I have to explain this to you lot, _but I ain’t Alternian Forces anymore_.”

“Then pray tell what you’re doing assaulting the highest-ranking officer opposing her.”

“My employer wants you dead. Pretty sure you’ve made a bunch of enemies, Dualscar.”

“That is Admiral Dualscar,” and you have to laugh. You wave him off.

“Nah, sorry, you’re right. I’m not Forces anymore, why should I care what you call yourself. You got a fleet, you can be an admiral, sure.”

“I am so glad you approve,” he comments wryly. “Though I can’t imagine why you thought assaulting a fleet would be such a brilliant idea.”

“Yeah, and that’s what cost you lot Sepsis III and IV.”

“Hmm. I suppose. And perhaps it would have worked, had we not upgraded. We picked you up on insertion. Our new armaments will counter the Forces’ numbers and attacks quite well.”

“Aaaaaaaat the cost of your free will and the future of the Empire, sure.”

He frowns, “What are you nattering on about?”

“Holy shit.” You blink behind your helmet. “You actually don’t know. So much for seadweller resistance to psychics.”

“What.” 

“Lemme, guess, along with whatever gear they gave you came these great big pillars, probably touted as part of the scanning equipment or whatever. By our lusii Dualscar, I’ve been fighting psychic intrusions since I got in here.”

“Good, then they are working. They are not scanning, they are subtle jammers, designed to shut down psychic assassins and what clowns Peixes got to join her.”

“Welp. They’ve already got you. Though I guess even a seadweller will crumble after weeks of this shit.”

His gills flare and he draws a bladeless cutlass, with a strange groove running vertically down the guard. 

“You can go ahead and continue to spit on the haemocaste all you like, but the fact remains that it is there for a reason, and Meenah knew it. We are inherently superior to low-bloods, though you have your uses. This Feferi-child’s rebellion won’t last because she is unwilling to take what actions are necessary to keep this species in line.

“So when you, this new fist of hers came after me, I knew this was just too good to pass up. Instead of assassinating me, you now have to fight me, fairly. These cameras will broadcast that fight and the beating I give you will make it clear that superiority exists for a reason.”

“Still not working for Peixes,” you sigh.

“Then prove it, in combat.” He flicks something on the guard of the cutlass and out folds a wicked blade in flickering, angry orange coherent light. 

“Huh.” you say. Then you get your legs under you and stand, before exploding into a flurry of slashes with your own blade. As the net falls to tatters around you, you ask, “Am I supposed to be impressed?”

With a snarl that twists his scarred face, he charges. You are almost bored by how slow he moves, but then he has closed and the speed of his first strike is such that you have no time to dodge and you have to bring the white blade up in a block. Which is when it _shatters_ into a million points of light and fades. In your shock, he gets a vicious kick in that sends you into a drone, which knocks you back towards him.

You turn your stumbling into a tumble and roll under his next slice. Another leap takes you out past his range and you spin back around, trying to re-ignite the blade. It snaps out again, seemingly no worse for wear, but power warnings skitter across your HUD. You won’t be able to re-cohere it again. 

So, he’s faster than he looks, stronger than you and no slouch of a fighter, either. If you’re honest, you’re no swordswoman, you just like melee more. He will probably have you beat in close combat given his experience and if you draw and fire on him, the drones will burn you where you stand. So. This is going to be rough.

Then you’re out of time to think because he charges again. This time you’re ready for his speed and answer with your own. Your block becomes a parry, slapping away his orange blade. Your free hand punches out at his face, but he snaps it back, _just so_ and you miss. His forehead butts into your helmet with a crash and you’re pretty sure that would have been it for the fight without the protection. Addendum: he is also incredibly tough. 

He takes advantage of your skittering optics and knees you in the stomach, lifting you clear off the ground. A hand grabs a corner of your armour and he tosses you casually away. You don’t have time to complete your roll to your feet before he kicks you in the face again, shattering a portion of your helmet. The optics go even more haywire and even as you turn your backwards reel into something resembling a backflip, you disengage the helmet. Blue blood splatters onto the ground from where the helmet caved in.

Fresh air hits you suddenly, the salt smell of the ocean making your nostrils flare, and suddenly you know how you’re going to win this one. His ridiculously cocky grin flashes as he bows,

“First blood to me.”

“Wow, who cares,” you say, straightening. You toss your matting hair back, and spit out a gob of blood and snot. “You know what matters? Who walks away.”

“And so far, Serket, that doesn’t look to be you.”

You shrug and charge. If he’s surprised by the change in your tactics, he doesn’t show it and moves forward. At the last second, he lunges forward with a burst of speed, but you’ve fought the best he’s trained for years now, and although his form is perfect, it doesn’t matter. You leap clear over him and your free hand snatches out, tearing his eye-patch from his head. You land with a bounce backwards and make a show of inspecting your prize.

You see him spin on you and you bark a disbelieving laugh. “Seriously? You still had an eye under there? Hells, you unbelievable poser.”

You tie the patch you your head and flip it down for a surprise. “Aww, Dualscar.”

But before you can spill the beans he’s in your face and you need all your concentration to fend him off. You’re not half-blinded yet. The damn patch is a HUD interface with a basic scanning suite. Poser indeed. He doesn’t fight handicapped at all. A vicious, razor sharp slash across your face nearly ends the fight, reminding you that he’s still a seadweller and is still a technically better sword-fighter. 

As the graze opens up, your eyes widen and you fake a stumble backwards. He goes for it, all pride and hunger and for all that he gets your forehead into his face as you plant your rearfoot and snap your body forward, straight past his guard. There is the _crack_ of bones crunching and he staggers back.

You had a decent shot to end it there, but you let him get his feet back under him. His face is misshapen, nose squashed and the very bones cracked and warped. Only troll resilience keeps him on his feet.

“Hey, Admiral, there a fancy term for the first broken bones of a fight?”

He tries to say something, but his jaw freezes.

“Here, lemme save you the embarrassment of trying to talk right now. I’m clearing _adapting_ to your fighting style and yeah, you’re bigger, stronger, faster and, hell, more skilled than I am. But you know what, I am still going to wipe the floor with you. That’s not really _fair_ now is it?”

You spit the question, literally, and your spittle runs clear now. You reach up to your face, and continue, “So here’s to fairness.”

You pop your prosthetic eye out, completely blinding yourself to any viewers watching. And now, with something wrong with his jaw, he can’t call you on being able to see through the patch. So you hold out your arms and say the words.

“Come at me.”

You go still, as if trying to listen for him. But you watch with your remaining good eye and it’s hilarious. His eyes dart from the drones back to you and his hesitation betrays him. He knows he’s lost this fight, even if he can still beat you down. You don’t know what makes him make his choice, maybe he thinks he can redact the transmission. But suddenly he decaptchas a massive blaster rifle into his free hand, aims, and fires at you.

You go prone, legs splitting apart and chest scraping the floor in the lowest springing stance you can muster and the beam sears above you, taking inches from your hair on its course through the hull itself. Then you spring, your armour propelling you into the fight again.

“Yeah, you’d be faster than me, but I’ve got combat stims,” you snarl, slashing for him. “Yeah, you’d be stronger than me, but I’ve got a fucking prosthetic that can punch drones apart. And you’re not a better fighter than me, you’re just technically!”

You punch him in the gut, “Stylistically!”

Again, “More!”

A cross cracks your face and you turn with it, allowing your moment to bring your leg around in a reverse roundhouse that shatters the massive rifle. “Proficient!”

He goes for a powerful overhand blow and you raise your blade to block again. Victory flashes in his eyes and a hideous grin scrawls its way across his broken face. His blade comes against yours and-

-passes straight through empty air. De-activating the blade, you spin into him, letting the cutlass carve through armour and a part of your arm. Your blade reactivates and punches out through his back.

“But oh, look,” you say, “I’m the last one standing.”

The blade went in vertically, so you wrench the thing out horizontally, tearing through ribs and skin with brute force and dragging organs and viscera with it. 

As the drones raise their arms to fire, you toss your eyeball spinning into the air and tell it, “Full purge.”

The searing laser follows the spin, tiny antigrav motors correcting for aim and twelve drones topple. You catch the thing and pop it back in, wincing at the heat of it jamming into your face. Following that, you redeploy your helmet and call the ship.

“Hey, so if we want to datamine this thing, now would be a good time.”

_Sending Equius down now, with the Responder and Calliope for fire-support._

* * *

They find the wreck hours later and a new ghost story starts filtering through the Old Guard. Because even though your ridiculous duel was broadcast, the last thing anyone saw was you surrounded by thirteen corpses and stalking up to the cameras, crushing them one by one. You sang something under your breath, grinning madly into each camera.

When they find the ship, it is an irradiate, corpse-filled barge. The first team had to be goaded onto the thing because as soon as they did, the speakers crackled with

_One kill._  
 _Two kills._  
 _Three kills._  
 _Four._  
 _Five kills._  
 _Six kills._  
 _Seven kills._  
 _More._  
 _Run away,_  
 _Run away,_  
 _The Spider’s at your door._

* * *

You are curled up beside Rose, staring into the void of space from her cabin. Her hands trace patterns on your skull now, delicate, soothing things and knead and scratch with fragile little nails.

“Do you mind if I ask you something, Vriska?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you think it was only your technical advantages that let you beat Dualscar so thoroughly?”

“Hell no. He was a fantastic fighter, but he wasn’t facing another duelist. You’ve made it clear, _I’m a weapon._ ”

Rose says something in a singsong language then, a short poem or some shit. Your translators don’t get it, and you expect its her native tongue. “What’s that, then?”

“A quote from an ancient, ancient text. The gist of it is that everything exists for some higher purpose. Materials for tools. A tool for the user. The user to her purpose.”

She looks down at where you’re nestled in the crook of her arm. 

“And our purpose?” she asks.

“Survival,” you say.  
“Freedom,” she says and blinks in surprise. Then, a laugh. “Maybe you trolls will win this after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Everything exists for some end, a horse, a vine. Why dost thou wonder?  
> Even the sun will say, I am for some purpose, and the rest of the  
> gods will say the same. For what purpose then art thou?”
> 
> \- Marcus Aurelius


	12. Operation: Eden Falling

It begins with Aradia and AR walking into the beach room. Aradia swallows, and says, “We found something.”

Rose sits up and looks at the grave face Aradia’s wearing. Then she touches her console and speaks, “All personnel to the briefing room.”

Once your rag-tag group filters in, Aradia and AR get a nod to continue. AR jacks into the terminal.

“Several hours ago, AR and I finished analyzing the datamine of Dualscar's ship. Much earlier, we confirmed with the Seer that our suspicions were correct and that the enemy have begun deep-level brainwashing of Old Guard forces on a massive scale. Thanks to the datamine, we will be able to determine the spread of them to date, but it is not looking good for them.”

The air before you begins to project images of trade between the Old Guard and the enemy. The pillars make several appearances, as do some hunter and Scratch units. You growl irritatedly and rub your eyes. Idiots. Equius shifts uncomfortably, crossing and uncrossing slicked arms. Rose nods.

“Hours ago, I sent this information clandestinely to the Her Imperial Courtesy and I believe that Feferi will finally move in force against them. Unfortunate, but ultimately according to plan. The Empire cannot be divided in the coming millennia.”

Aradia gives an uncertain nod, and continues. “That was the easy part, looking for evidence of corruption. The Seer also tasked us with locating further black boxes, on the suspicion that the enemy had provided the data to the Old Guard as targets for destruction. That does not appear to be the case.

“What seems to have happened is that someone in the Old Guard found a black box, broken and corrupted like the rest, but managed to extract some information. Some was a series of locations.”

The projection changes to a massive scrolling set of numbers. At that, Rose sits up. “Black box locations?”

“Indeed. Except the vast majority of them appear to be traps. This, of course, only convinced Old Guard command that there was something worthwhile at the end of the trail. Along they way, they encountered the... hunchbacks.” You see Aradia trade a look with Rose and the human gives a miniscule nod. Your eyes narrow.

“So, the status of these black box locations?”

AR speaks up. “It seems that there is no decryptable pattern to which are traps and which are not, or that data was lost to corruption. However, after extensive analysis by my superior processes which I humbly make available to you all on a daily basis, I was able to determine a pattern to the data.”

A single set of data replaces the scrolling mess. It looks like a paragraph of information in the human language. There is an expectant silence and then the completely unexpected happens.

“FUCK!” screams Rose, and flips her massive desk. There's the sparking of psychic discharge and mid flip she hurls the desk into the ocean with a wave of both arms. Your crew slowly back up.

“Are you fucking trolling me, here, AI?”

“I am not, Seer. Also, please do not deactivate me.”

Your crew back up further, but you swallow and do your fucking job. You step forward, completely ignoring Rose's warning glare and enfolding her in a hug. You're not great at this, because she immediately tries to struggle out, pushing and beating on your chest. But she's not flailing at you psychically, so you let her take her anger out on you. A sob is muffled against your chest as two small fists pound on last time against your frame. Then a whisper,

“Okay. Okay, I am fine. You can let me go now, Vriska, I have composed myself.”

You step back and try to avoid looking down at the mess of human tears and make-up on your front. Aradia and Equius stare at you, open-mouthed and blushing. You toss your hair behind your head and meet their gazes, challengingly. They can't hold contact and look away in either direction, blushing all the harder. You don't think they really believed Vriska Serket was a moirail until that moment.

“Wanna give us the lowdown on that heinous and illegal action, Seer?” Ron asks, crossing smaller arms.

“Yes. This data would have been completely useless to anyone who could not read Standard and even then, still useless without extremely specific information regarding human culture.”

“So what is it?”

“They are directions that obliquely reference a location in a human megacity on our home planet. An-”

“A specific location? You seem to be ahead of me, I was only able to narrow it down to London.”

“You likely have never played Mornington Crescent, or even have a record of it.”

“I do not. But these are not even directions to the station, they are rules arguments and name-calling-”

“Yes. Mornington Crescent. That is the point of the game.”

“Hang on. Your people had a game the point of which was to argue about the rules and call each other names? I used to wonder how people as advanced as you lot lost against these things, but now-”

A raincloud breaks above your head, soaking you through almost instantaneously. You nod sagely. “I deserved that.”

“Useless commentary on dead cultures aside,” Equius enters the conversation brusquely, and promptly ruins his entrance with, “Oh fiddlesticks, please forgive me that was rude and insensitive to Your Grace.”

You cock an eyebrow. That was a new one.

“No, you have a point. We have a location and one relatively easy to access. It is not as if I haven't been to the planet dozens of times and never once detected any trace of a box,” Rose says bitterly.

You put a dripping wet hand on her shoulder, at which she gives you a look and you remove it.

“Ship, set course for home,” the Seer says, and leaves.

* * *

“Seer, these coordinates... I only bring this up because as you know I am a fastidious soul and obey every command of my superiors... but this is a Forbidden Zone. The Condesce barred entry to this area millennia ago.”

“She did. At my behest. Earth is a ruin world rife with signs of war against the enemy. We could not risk another early purge because some overly brilliant escavaterrorist dug up too many pieces of a puzzle.”

Rose looks over the back of the command chair at Aradia. “Commentary?”

“I saw the datamine, Seer. Fuck academic freedoms, I'm with you on this.”

* * *

Earth is a ruinworld, except unlike so many others you've been on, it does not look like nature had even a chance to recover it. Where other ruins would be overgrown, or hidden under meters of shifted rock after eighty thousand years, Earth looks like a battlefield from yesterday. Well, hundreds of years ago.

Everything is gray. The ground is ash and dust, concrete and unfamiliar metals. The sky is dark, covered almost entirely by clouds that have not dissipated since before the Empire. What light gets through does little to warm the frigid planet. Rose's office, the briefing room, the beach. It begins to make sense.

And all around, at least where you land, evidence of the fall of a civilization. You fly over a collapsed hivestem so long it juts into a river. These things would have _towered_. They make the tallest of the buildings of Alternia Itself look like fungushuts. Before the visor of her helmet closes, Aradias eyes were huge, and filling with tears of awe. You get it. Eighty thousand years, and all this is still here.

You all pour out of the shuttle, everyone except the Mayor, who's still too weak to come, though he sits in the briefing room, cheering you on with ridiculous little penants made from the labels of ration tins. Rose barely wears armour, light stuff that she's put a loose dress over and tied with an enormous sash/scarf thing. Her helmet seals itself and you are momentarily aware of a psychic presence that blankets the city. You shiver at her power and she sees you do it.

_Amplifiers in the helmet. Old technology, before we altered ourselves in natural psychics. I will have this thing if I have to rip the entirety of London into low orbit._

You shiver again, but nod, decisively. You pull your veil down and over your horns, over your new helmet with its huge, glaring mono-oc made to mock the hunchbacks. “AR, lead the way. Everyone else, perimeter around the Seer.”

You disappear then, to make circuits over your travelling party, scouting ahead, bringing up the rear. You let Rose's nervous energy infect you, hold it close to you. She is aware of your leeching, your nervous bounding through ruins and hyper-vigilance and you feel a kiss press to you forehead. _On duty here, Lalonde._

_Thank you all the same._

You make it to the spot AR has marked on your mini-maps and halt. A squat, dusty building, once maybe a reddish brown stands before you. Equius lifts up a gate that shatters and warps in his grip, its structural integrity long since compromised. Inside, what were once presumably stairs have crumbled into a slope deep into the ground.

You and the Aimless Renegade hop down first, used to working together in such situations already. You call the tunnel as clear and the others follow into the darkness. What light remained is gone down here and Calliope raises a hand to conjure a floating mote of green.

“Ladies and gentlemen, species of all kinds... welcome to the Tube,” mutters the human.

The lot of you look around. You're on some kind of platform, and then there's a ditch that turns into deep, dark tunnels. You've been in worse spots, tactically, but they are few and far between. “Alright spread out and look for... Megido, you're the shovelfucker, what are we looking for.”

You can almost feel the look she gives you, but a VI uploads to your armours, presumably to help you find likely signs of hidden chambers. You're pretty sure yours is going to lead you into an ancient wasteblock.

You don't have to extract yourself from a latrine or anything though, and eventually a ping comes over the comms, signalling that someone has found something. It's Aradia, naturally, but you're a good sport, you let her have this victory. What looks like the entry into a small storage closet turns out to hide an entrance into a set of sub-tunnels and after hurling some shelving out, your squad enters.

“It's strange. The tunnels above were obviously industrial, but these are...”

“Yes, Aradia?” Rose prompts.

“I might be going insane, but I would almost say they were designed to be found by people.”

“Not very secure, that.”

“Hmm, perhaps not. What makes you say they were designed to be found?”

“I don't know! I just get the feeling that if I- that I-, look, these things are what an escavaterrorist would expect tunnels to be. They were in almost the first place I looked and that is ridiculously unheard of.”

“Intuition, then. A tool our enemy lacks. Hmm.”

Conversation ceases then, as the tunnel dead ends in a massive, featureless metallic door. It looks like a warship blast door and it occurs to you that there are worse ways to hide a relic than inside something designed to shrug off a torpedo.

“That,” Equius says, pointing at the door. “Does not exist.”

Above his gauntlet hovers one of his VIs, presumably running analysis on the structure. You and Ron approach cautiously, running scans of your own. You look to the carapacian, and he shakes his head. No explosives. Your intrusion systems also say there are no sensors or tripwires or what have you. You pick up a crumbled piece of wall and chuck it at the door.

Clang.

Nothing.

“Well, there has to be some way of opening it,” Rose says, unsealing her helmet. The door shimmers then, and then vibrates, a deep tone that you swear is speech.

“Alliance Survival Project DNA detected, Stage 9 post-human, uncorrupted,” AR translates, “Access granted.”

And the immense doors beging to grind apart. As they do, you realize how huge they actually are, because they seem to go up to the surface and are a dozen meters deep. Their insides are filled with more electronics than you can think of a use for, but hey, according to your scanners, this place _still_ doesn't exist.

It is a vault. There is no facility on the other side of the door, just a short hall, and a pedestal.

“I recognize this design,” says Aradia softly. “The first black box we found, the one you hacked in my own apartment, we found it in something like this. Without the huge-ass door, that is.”

“Likely the construction wasn't finished. These things were laid down in the First War, and we were... harried back then.”

Rose still hasn't moved. Calliope gives her a small push, strange skeletal hand lightly touching her back and nudging her forward. A hesitant step, then determined strides. None of you follow. This is her moment. Deeper into the vault, she slows, comes to a stop before the pedestal. A hand comes up, hesitates. And then commits, activating the black box.

The vault goes dark and the box's outlines glow blue, before firing a thin, cascading pillar of light into the air. The galaxy explodes into life around you, Lalonde and millions of images begin to flutter past: planets, aliens, strange war machines, space stations, faces and texts. And from the middle of it, a high, disbelieving laugh. Rose drops to her knees and you're there before you even realize you've leapt the distance.

“I've done it. I've finally done it. Untold millennia of searching, centuries doing it myself, and I have finally done it,” she looks up at you, tearing glimmering in her eyes, small mouth in a wide smile, as unapologetically happy as you've ever seen her. “Mission Accomplished, Spider.”

“Mission Accomplished, Seer,” you smile back. She deactivates the box and you take it up, holding it under one arm as you exit the vault. You're about to say something, when Calliope's eyes go squirrelly in her sockets.

“Something... is waking up out there.” Her gaze fixes on a point in the rock, through it, to the east. “Something huge. Powerful.”

“Horrorterror,” whispers Rose. “One stayed behind, waiting for someone to open the vault. How the hell did we miss it, scanning?”

“I think it is buried pretty deep, Rose. It'll take some time to wake and then find us.”

“No,” snaps Rose, “It already knows where we are, this thing must be a beacon to it. Everyone back to the shuttle, doubletime!”

No sooner has she said that and a deep bass rumble blares through the earth, setting your world shaking and the walls crumbling.

“Go! Go!” you scream, waving at the tunnels. Like hell you're gonna get trapped down here, without even the chance to face this grand enemy eye-to-eye. The others race ahead of you, and you make sure Ron gets out on his tiny legs before you. You all piled out into the Tube station again before another earth-shattering noise shakes everything, casting you all to the ground. You roll, protecting the box with your body. You end up on your back, and so have a great view of the ceiling caving in to kill you.

* * *

A noise, and everything stops. You realize it is a scream, a human scream and then you notice the curtain of light around everything, holding back the crushing weight of the world above you. A misshapen dome surrounds your squad and the wisps of blue and gold colours that identify Rose Lalonde's psychic overbleed. She is on her hands and knees, arms pressed out to either side as if holding apart crushing forces.

“No,” she growls again, through her helmet's grill. The sparking gets more intense and she continues, “Not when we are this close.”

Then the falling sparks explode into dark flames. The gold is slowly eaten up and the blue warps and tinges until the flames flicker violet and dark. Her helmet partially unseals, or rather, reconfigures, pressing circuitry to her temples. The amplifiers, you assume, but the frightening thing isn't that, its the burning. Where the flaming psychic overbleed touches her skin, it seems to crackle into grayish black. Her eyes roll back entirely in her head and the flames lick higher. And then she stands and the dome groans outward, pushing the enormous mass of the station outward, upward.

A trembling growl and Rose's frail little arms turn over, moving from _holding back_ to _carrying_. The dome's edges creak and crack outwards, and slice into the walls of the station, creating a vast horizontal plane. An ear-shattering scream that sends black splittle flying form her mouth and Rose, the dome and Rose begin to _lift_.

It is as if the ground groans in answer to the distant monstrosity and all around the walls, the very air shakes. The other six of you look around in shock, awe and not a little bit of fear as the ground begins to rise into the air. Light lances into the Tube station as the gigantic chunk of the city is propelled upwards by psychic manifestations in black fire and white lightning.

And in the distance, something monstrous, just as large rears. You see the curve of something almost organic, but massive, something that might look like the perversion of the ship you've been flying on. And then it is gone, because Rose has seen it too. With a blood curdling scream that reverberates in all your minds and nearly overloads your helmet's sensors, Rose Lalonde hurls a city block of rubble at the horrorterror. Psychically directed, it catches the thing straight on and casts it to the ground again.

Panting, trembling, bleed black ichor from her nose, mouth and eyes, Rose snarls something in a tongue that makes Calliope flinch. She starts forward and Calliope holds out a hand to try and stop her, but its not necessary. The Seer of Light collapses.

“Fuck!” That's you, shattering the silence, the distant rumbling. You run to her side, but AR is already checking her vitals.

“Massive psychic trauma. Possibly hemorrhaging internally around... implants? It seems our Seer is fucking shithive maggots suicidal. We need to get her back to the ship ASAP.”

“Don't need to tell me twice, full fucking retreat to the shuttle!”

* * *

Your retreat was quick, orderly and short. Your reflexes are the only thing that save you. As you round a corner, you hurl yourself backwards as you catch sight of movement beyond.

“Fucking hunchbacks!” you whisper to the squad. The plaza you landed in was completely infested with them. “At least a hundred, mixed units. Fuck.”

“How are we going to get through that?” whispers Aradia, panicking.

“How are we going to survive that?” says Equius, pointing into the distance where the colossal horrorterror is finally righting itself. A terrifyingly large squid-thing, not at all as elegant as your octopod-like ship after all, with edges taper into razor-sharp protrustions. At the nexus of its legs glares an almost familiar mono-oc.

You tear your thoughts from the mind-numbing size of the thing and focus. This is not just about surviving, this is about winning. You need to complete your objectives. Your objectives are: one – get the box to the ship. Two – and it pains you that this is secondary, get Rose to the ship. Three – Survive long enough to get the entirety of the information in that thing to Feferi Peixes, either by Rose's delivery mechanisms or by transmission.

A plan coheres, and you know your role.

“Right. Equius, I need you to alter my stealth signature to make it look like I'm the lot of you. Start now.” Obediently, the huge indigo deploys his tools and starts interfacing with your veil. “Calliope, I don't know you very well and you don't know me very well. But I need you to take that thing.”

Her eyes widen and her jaw drops. “Wha- what? I can't-”

“You said your parent survived several. Come on, you can take one.”

“No, I'm-”

“Then we all die, even if I can draw off that mass of hunchbacks.”

“I volunteer to assist you with that,” says AR, stepping forwards. “I am an AI, I am backed up to the ship's drives.”

“How long to redownload yourself from there?”

“A few hour-”

“Too long. You go with everyone else on the shuttle. I need an AI compiling and compressing this data to get back to Feferi.”

“A few hours will not-”

“Android! There are bound to be hunchback ships in orbit. You cannot be certain we will survive that long,” Equius barks. “Furthermore, obey your superiors!”

AR has the gall to look annoyed. “It seems you are correct. I apologize. Give me the box and I will get started immediately.”

You hand it off to him. “The rest of you play cover for him and R- the Seer. After I take off and try to draw them off, wait until you're sure there aren't any more and then bolt for the shuttle and _get the hell out_.”

You turn back to the cherub. “What's it going to be, Callie?”

She starts at the name, looking at you incredulously. Then something like a smile mars her terrifying face. “Oh, what the heck. I want you all to know that this was a wonderful adventure, no matter how it ends.”

You hold out your hand, and when she goes to shake it, you bypass it and grip her arm. Surprised, she does the same. You do the same for everyone else, except Ron, who you humour with the Knight's complicated bro-shake, snapping fingers, slapping palms and bumping knuckles.

Equius stows his miniature tools and backs away from you. “It is done. The next time you enter stealth, the veil will not mask your signature, but amplify it, mimicking ours to the best of my ability.”

“Hell, these things are dumb as bricks. Even the worst of yours'll do,” you joke half-heartedly and punch him in the shoulder. Then you sober up. With one last nod to the team,

“It's been great, folks. See you on the other side.” You bend to kiss Rose's brow, and where your lips touch, the black comes off, revealing pristine human skin. You rub the oily stuff from your lips and your helmet slams shut. And then Calliope and you take off in opposite directions, the cherub already beginning to expand, you drawing down your veil.

* * *

You think its working like a charm, judging from the sound of hundreds of metallic feet pounding along behind you. You run like you've never run before, legs pounding along in your silent armour to draw the hunchbacks away from the shuttle. You don't want to scan for an exact number in case that gives up the game, you just have to hope that what might be left will be enough for your squad.

You remember the roar of the Renegades seemingly limitless arsenal, the noiseless crash of the archeradicator's bow. The mechanical precision of AR's skill with the artefact rifle will see them well and the memory of the dead howling and lending Megido strength doesn't terrify you anymore, it gives you hope.

You lead them on, weaving and dodging through the ruins, leading them deeper and deeper into denser territory. You almost lose them and have to drop out of and into stealth again to get them back on your scent. Then a distant crackle of noise and light halts you, spins you around. A moment later a double-click comes through your comms and you laugh aloud, right before a shuttle blasts off, heading into the sky.

The sky-scraping horrorterror turns, its eye glowing red and tracking the shuttle. Your laugh dies off, but even as the glow reaches critical mass, a green miasma wafts up around its legs and a bolt of viridian fire slams into the thing, sending its aim wide.

Your cheer coincides with bright green wings expanding to fill that area with light too bright to look at and you congratulate yourself on a plan well-executed. Then your sensors alert you to enemies nearby, so you do some stretches, limber up. That's how they find you, in an alley of ruins, a narrow space that minimizes their numbers. Dozens of the things file in, close to the number at the plaza, while you're rolling your neck and wrists. Their weapons are at the ready, but they don't fire. You know what's next.

They part for the Scratch unit, all perfect gleaming metal and white ceramic.

“Well played, Vriska Serket, of-”

“This is where you try to unsettle me with all that crap about where I'm from, what I'm afraid of, showing off your actually pathetic omniscience, yada, yada, yada. Look, I'll make this easy for you. The last one of you I faced tried the same thing, underestimating me. See if your omniscience can figure this out from there.”

The thing is robotically still. Then the two of you draw at the same time. The plasma cannon pops out of its right shoulder, but it has a charge time and your Butcher doesn't. The kinetic shot blasts the weapon off its mounting and it explodes violently behind the Scratch, staggering it forwards. A slot opens on its left but you fire silk harpoon after silk harpoon into the gap until the tiny drones have no way of deploying.

The last harpoon you trigger the microwinch on, letting it haul you at speed into melee range. Huge arms come up cross before the mono-oc, but your blade doesn't care about their armour and punches straight through arms and head with ease.

The Scratch topples over and you stand over the carcass, battle-ready.

“Next,” you call, and nothing moves for half an eternity. And then, from the back, another Scratch unit.

“You were correct. We have been poor hosts and have badly underestimated you, Vriska Serket. You are an exceptional unit and your abilities will be analyzed upon your assimilation.”

“You gotta assimilate me first, cue ball.”

“Not difficult,” it says and your mind turns to white fire.

_Ah, here it is, your last encounter with one of us. I see, you do put up effective defenses. Yes, should trolls all be allowed to evolve into such determined avatars of your potential, the Great Masters might have a fight on their hands. Unlikely, but I wouldn't bet against it, were I a betting unit._

The fire spreads to every atom of your nervous system and you feel like you will cook from the inside out. You try to mount some defense against the invasion, but it is like trying to hold back a sun.

_Before, you fought but one of us, Vriska Serket. Would you like to guess how many of us are out there now? You would like the irony._

It grips you by the skull, lifting your twitching, writhing form clear off the ground. You can feel the armour begin to buckle, even from that light a grip.

_Eight. The number is eight. Eight of us, and one of you. Consensus is that you could take any one or even perhaps two of us on your own, never mind the lesser units. But eight? Your indoctrination will come soon enough._

The fire feels like it is eating your thoughts, leaving you cold where it passes and you begin to ache for that. Even as a piece of you recognizes the trap, other parts of you yearn for it.

Then, the sensation of falling. Falling, and breaking the surface of a deep psychic ocean. The fire evaporates and chill cold envelopes your every pore, strengthening you, hardening your defenses. You drift into the dark abyss of the ocean for what seems like forever. Somewhere down there, you come face to face with something from the earliest memories of your people.

Pure white plating and six glowing, red eyes. The Rift's Carbuncle, the Speaker of the Vast Glub that threatens your species. Gl'bgolyb. You slowly recognize the similarity between it and the horrorterrors and brace for worse.

_NO, VRISKA SERKET. THOUGH I AM WORSE, I AM NOT HERE TO HARM YOU. YOU ARE MY FAVOURITE CREATION. THE HUMAN HAS FASHIONED A BEAUTIFUL WEAPON OUT OF THE RAW MATERIALS I LET HER HAVE. THOUGH YOUR END MIGHT BE NEAR, I WILL NOT SEE YOU FACE IT INDOCTRINATED, A MINDLESS HUSK. FROM NOW ON, THE ONLY FIRE IN YOU WILL BE YOUR OWN. YOU SHALL NOT BEND, YOU SHALL NOT BREAK. THOUGH YOU MAY PERISH HERE, DO SO KNOWING YOU HAVE SAVED US ALL. THE GALAXY WILL KNOW OF THE SPIDER, ALTERNIA'S BEST AND BRIGHTEST HATCHLING._

* * *

The troll stops twitching, spasming. All connection with her mind is lost. Analyzing obstruction. No obstruction found. Conjecture: brain dead, subject frailer mentally than anticipated. Begin necromine for information.

“Hey.”

Alert! Subject lives. Re-analysis of cause of break in interface required.

“If it's all the same to you, I'd like my head back.”

Temperatures rising in palm of arresting unit, recommend immediate release.

“Fine, I'll free myself.”

The alley fills with light. Contact lost with arresting unit, infantry units seven through forty-two, hunter units six and eight, Scratch units three, five, seven and nine...

* * *

Your helmet smokes, the mono-oc cycling through a filter as your prosthetic eye charges up again. You bugged Equius for a direct interface for your laser through the helmet and he more than delivered.

“Hey, hunchbacks. Yeah, I know your real names now, but Lalonde's right. You don't deserve them. Here's how this is gonna go. I am going to go through as many of you as I can, while my friend Calliope _eats one of your Great Masters alive from the inside_ ,” you say, pointing at the warping, crumbling horrorterror, wreathed in crackling green mist.

“You have two choices: try to fight me to the death, or _run_. Let's see if you have the reason left to figure out which you should do.”

A moment, then dozens of plasma rifles point at you. Your face twists into a snarling grin.

“Wrong answer.”

Your eye fires, focusing and amplifying through your mono-oc, carving a swath through the hunchbacks, the beam large enough now to vapourize whole bodies and parts of the ruins besides. Plasma fire begins to eat through your armour and you charge as the walls come tumbling down.

* * *

You awaken in austerity, bereft of your armour and immediately panic. You sit up so quickly, the world spins and your nearly pass out, but strong arms catch you and you hold on to them.

“Vrrrriska?” you manage weakly.

“No,” says Aradia, sadly. “I'm sorry, no. She didn't make- No, she sacrificed herself for us, drawing off enough hunchbacks to let us escape.”

A hole opens in your chest and you know now that no matter how long you live, how long you extend your life, it will never fill. Tears run freely from your eyes.

“Sorry. Ah, do you want a minute?”

“No,” you choke out. “Report, Ms. Megido. Mission status.”

“Calliope tore the horrorterror apart and then dragged the hunchback carrier in orbit into the atmosphere to boot. We got away home free. She's healing now, on the surface. That's the good news. The bad news is she's cracked the planet open to get at its mineral core. Says she needs it if she's going to survive the damage she took.”

“She... cracked Earth open?”

“The planet is undergoing catastropic seismic breakdown. Within a few sweeps, there will be a new asteroid ring in the system. She seems pretty sorry about it.”

You wave it away. The loss of a dead planet after what you've lost now? It doesn't even rate.

“Our objective?”

“Already uploading to our systems. Vriska ordered AR to compress and prepare the lot of it for the Courtess.”

“Good girl,” you smile. “The box, then...?”

Aradia smiles, finally. From behind her, she moves the ancient thing onto the bed, and activates it. The little pillar of light rises again as the archive comes to life again. But instead of the galaxy, it resolves into a single figure.

“Seer of Light, meet the creator of the archive, the Shadow Broker.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: There's nothing in the guidelines about filling two prompts at once.
> 
> Prompt #2:
> 
> Aradia is a 00 agent of MI6 (or some similar superspy). Vriska is an enforcer for (or formerly for and now on the run from?) a criminal syndicate. Can they work together to take down the evil mob boss before he assassinates the Prime Minister? (Or something similar like that.)
> 
>  
> 
> _I'd love to see this work out as blackrom with these two ladies wreaking havoc across a variety of exotic locales. You could also transplant the same concept into universes like **Mass Effect** , Guardians of the Galaxy, or even Pirates of the Caribbean. No humanstuck please!_


	13. Epilogue

In the furthest distance, an old sun still glows yellow. Its heat, its radiance washes across worlds untouched for millennia. Once, it graced two worlds with the gift of life. Now both lie barren. Mars, as the humans called it, has been undisturbed since the First War swept what little life remained from it. The void of space around the planet Earth, however, is more active than it has been in aeons. A great winged serpent made of living radiation basks in the dying fires of the planet's core as the immense gravitational and magnetic forces tear the oblate sphere to pieces.

A single ship makes its way to the mass effect relay, the words _The Roxy_ scrawled along its hull. Once, it was a bright and joyous thing in white and pink. But tragedy struck and cast its captain on the road she still walks. Now, the only colour left is the writing, grudgingly left scrawled on the side in some ancient hand. Designed to mock the very creatures it opposes, it bears with it a message of hope, a symbol of defiance. One might even say it is designed to piss the creatures off. It has been and will continue to be very, very good at it. Though not as good as one of its former inhabitants. It is the legacy of an Alliance turned against things from the deepest dark, a last, desperate union of species. It will be the herald of an Empire, revengeant.

The ruins of Earth are already spreading as the planet's gravity well sputters, spikes, and fails. What were once mountains tumble through the void. Entire lakes and the remains of oceans freeze into new, misshapen comets, while the very atmosphere drifts, separates and congeals. This is the death of a world, not a pyre, but a drifting cairn. Where people once walked, now silence. Whole cities, now asteroids.

And in the depths of one of those asteroids, in one of those cairns, a single, baleful eye, red as a dying sun, flickers to life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here ends the tale of
> 
>   
>  _Spider's Seer_   
> 
> 
>   
>  _\-- OR --_   
> 
> 
>   
>  _The Consequences of Electromagnetic Accelleration of Indeterminate Objects Writ Large Upon an Unsuspecting Universe, As Told By The Troll Species, Part the Fourth_
> 
>   
>  _\-- OR --_   
> 
> 
>   
>  _Troll Mass Effect 4_   
> 


End file.
